Achieving sustainable ruralcommunities for the 21st century

The Rural Coalition

The RuralChallenge

This report is about a future for rural England in which every rural communitycan thrive. It presents a shared policy agenda for rural communities, and itsoverriding objective is to help achieve a positive, lasting legacy of sustainablerural communities in which people enjoy living and working; which are vibrant,distinctive and in keeping with the character of their surroundings, with a fullrange of good-quality local services; and which enhance local landscapes,heritage and biodiversity while meeting the challenges of climate and economicchange. It proposes urgent, implementable changes that pick up and respond tothe concerns that the partners in the new Coalition Government have alreadystated they wish to address.

The Rural Coalition comprises the following organisations:� Action with Communities in Rural England (ACRE).� Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE).� The Country Land and Business Association (CLA).� The Local Government Group (LG Group).� The Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI).� The Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA).

The Commission for Rural Communities brought the Rural Coalition together inSeptember 2008 and has supported the Rural Coalition Chair and its Members withthe production of this report and with technical advice on its content.The Rural Coalition has also been supported and advised by:

�� Action for Market Towns (AMT).�� The Rural Services Network (RSN).�� The Carnegie UK Trust Rural Community Development Programme.�� The Plunkett Foundation.

Further helpful advice has been provided by:

�� The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE).�� English Heritage (EH).�� National Association of Local Councils (NALC).�� The National Housing Federation (NHF).�� The English National Parks Authorities Association (ENPAA).

This report

The Rural Challenge. Achieving sustainable rural communities for the 21st century© The Rural Coalition. August 2010Published on behalf of the Rural Coalition by the Town and Country Planning Association, 17 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AS

Printed by RAP Spiderweb Ltd, Clowes Street, Hollinwood, Oldham OL9 7LY

The RuralChallengeAchieving sustainable ruralcommunities for the 21st century

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction, by Matthew Taylor

The Rural Coalition

Summary of key propositions

Challenge 1: Meeting rural housing need

Challenge 2: Building thriving rural economies

Challenge 3: Delivering great rural services

Challenge 4: Flourishing market towns

Challenge 5: Empowering communities

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The Rural Coalition is very grateful to the following bodies for providing financial supportfor the production of this report:

Action with Communities in Rural England

Campaign to Protect Rural England

The National Housing Federation

The Plunkett Foundation

Acknowledgements

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The Rural Challenge

This report is about a future for rural England in whichevery rural community can thrive.

In most rural towns and villages, community hasalways been more important than the state. Our reportis not about central direction, the technicalities of newdevelopment, or the necessary size of investment inpublic services. In fact it is not about top-down rulesand targets at all. To build the ‘Big Society’ in ruralareas the greatest need is to answer the questionsabout how government at every level can empowerrural communities – to manage and plan for businessand residential growth in the countryside over time, toshape and take part in the delivery of services, and tomeet the challenges of an age of austerity and climatechange – in a way that is:

� more sustainable (to meet the challenges of theenvironment, climate change and communitycohesion);

� more attractive (to address concerns aboutunattractive, badly planned developmentsgobbling up the green fields around historic ruralcommunities); and

� more flexible (to tackle the diverse needs and thechallenges of tailoring services to small ruralcommunities spread across huge geographicalareas).

So the rural challenge today includes supporting new,better-paid and diverse employment opportunities,providing the homes needed for those who live andwork in rural areas on low incomes, and maintainingand evolving the services they rely on. The greaterchallenge is to achieve this while genuinely enhancingrural communities, increasing local and nationalsustainability in the context of climate change, andcontinuing to conserve the open countryside to ensureenvironmental security, food security, and access toopen countryside for the enjoyment of all. And giventhe impacts of the credit crunch, the challenge is alsohow to deliver all this at less cost to the taxpayer thanthe existing – often ineffective – approach to theserural communities and rural environments.

The emphasis in this report is on empowering localpeople, entrepreneurs, community organisations andParish Councils to achieve all this, supported andenabled by District, County and Unitary Councils. Soour recommendations are often directed to localgovernment, and we also make a number of promisesof action that our own members will take too.Alongside these are some very importantrecommendations for necessary action by centralgovernment to unlock and enable initiative andcommunity decision-making at the local level, so as toallow this all to happen.

The overriding objective of this report is to helpachieve a positive, lasting legacy of sustainablerural communities in which people enjoy livingand working; which are vibrant, distinctive and in keeping with the character of theirsurroundings, with a full range of good-qualitylocal services; and which enhance locallandscapes, heritage and biodiversity whilemeeting the challenges of climate and economicchange.

IntroductionBy Matthew Taylor, Chair

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The Rural Challenge

In September 2008 six leading national bodies (see the listof Coalition organisations on the back cover) concernedabout the future of rural communities in England cametogether with the support of the Commission for RuralCommunities to launch a prospectus setting out ourshared views – The Future is Rural Too.1 The prospectusset out our common concerns and initial proposals for anew approach to rural communities in the face ofenvironmental challenges, financial and social pressures,and the reality of change.

We said that we would consult on our ideas, andengage in our own vigorous debate, to draw up andpresent a shared policy agenda for rural communities.This would propose urgent, implementable changesthat pick up and respond to the concerns that thepartners in the new Coalition Government have alreadystated they wish to address.

This report is the result of that work. As we havedeveloped this vision, our coalition has grown. We lookforward to working with people in rural Britain, localCouncils and the new Government to deliver an urgentpolicy shift that will secure the future of rural England.

The need for change

What we said in the prospectus:

‘Everyone in this country, wherever they may live andwork, needs a strong, confident and sustainablecountryside. It is of huge value to us all:environmentally, socially and economically, and will beinstrumental in tackling climate change.

‘Yet it is all too easy for national governments to treatthe nation they govern as a single, homogeneous unit.It may be simpler that way but it’s seldom sensible. Forfifty years or more, policy has undervalued thecountryside and failed to meet the needs of rural

communities – and therefore of the nation. In hindsight,the result is starkly apparent. Rural communities haveslowly but relentlessly become less and less sustainableand less and less self-sufficient.

‘On its current course, with no change of policy and nocommitment to action, much of the countryside isbecoming part dormitory, part theme park and partretirement home. Only if people in rural communitieshave ready access to local schools, local jobs, localshops and pubs and affordable homes will they and theirchildren thrive, and will the nation meet its environmentaland economic needs. Sentimentality plays no part in allof this. A newly invigorated countryside is essential forhard-nosed reasons that affect our national future.

‘The Rural Coalition is united in our conviction that ourcountryside is in urgent need of a new vision, and made-to-measure policies distinguished by the fact that none isimposed blindly from distant places but all emergedemocratically from rural communities themselves.

‘The plans outlined below are not discrete: they overlapbecause they have to. A vicious circle needs to bebroken and replaced by a virtuous one. So localplanning, community involvement, affordable housing,the encouragement of new business opportunities, theprovision of good schools, shops, pubs and other leisurefacilities need to be seen not as separate issues but asinterdependent parts of the necessary whole.’

Since we published our prospectus in autumn 2009, ithas become ever more apparent that the concerns wevoiced are shared across rural communities, and acrossthe political spectrum. The Taylor Review, LivingWorking Countryside (2008),2 helped to crystallise agrowing consensus about the future of rural Englandwhich emerged towards the end of the last decade:

� Living in the countryside is a popular choice formany, including those who do not work in the

The Rural Coalition

1 The Future is Rural Too. Rural Coalition prospectus, 2009.www.acre.org.uk/DOCUMENTS/Rural%20Coalition/The%20Future%20is%20Rural%20Too.pdf

2 Living Working Countryside. The Taylor Review of Rural Economy and Affordable Housing. Department for Communities and LocalGovernment, 2008. www.communities.gov.uk/publications/planningandbuilding/livingworkingcountryside

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The Rural Challenge

local economy of rural communities. In 2008 alonethe net migration from urban to rural areas was92,000 people.3 This migratory trend has social,environmental and economic implications – notleast that, as increasing numbers made the choiceto move from urban to rural communities, withlimited housing supply, house prices in many ruralsettlements were pushed up beyond the means oflocal people.

� The stock of affordable homes in rural areas hashistorically been proportionately lower than inurban areas. A slow rate of build, and a significantdecline in the number of affordable homes asRight to Buy sales have not been replaced, hasimpacted disproportionately on the current ruralstock of affordable housing. By 2008, 315,506households in predominantly rural districts wereon Local Authority housing waiting lists, but theproportion of affordable homes in rural areas islittle more than half that in urban communities.4

Low local wages and a lack of affordable homes inour villages mean that the people who do the workin the countryside – on the farms, in the shops, inthe huge diversity of local businesses – areincreasingly priced out of housing near where theywork. Already many rural workers are forced tocommute from towns, and some businesses nowfail to find employees or rely on migrant temporarylabour. ONS (Office for National Statistics) figuresshow that in June 2010 there were 91,581 unfilledvacancies in rural England.5

� Rural economies provide millions of jobs, are hometo half a million businesses, and are worth nearly£145,000million to the national economy everyyear.6 They are critical for meeting the need fornational sustainability in the context of climatechange. The planning system has rightly played adecisive role in protecting the open countryside,

historic towns and charming villages which are ofthemselves assets of significant environmental,social, cultural, and economic value. Too often,however, planning practice for rural areas hasfailed to meet the unique housing, work andservices requirements of the people who live andwork in these communities. With fewer youngfamilies and low-income households able toaccess housing in villages, services like schools,buses, and Post Offices become even less viable –and if lost altogether further threaten thesustainability of communities. From 1998 to 2009there have been 285 rural primary schoolclosures,7 and the pace of closures of villageschools is rising once again, despite thepresumption against the closure of village schoolsadopted by Government in 2009.8

� Rural England is actually more dependent onpublic sector jobs than is urban England. Onaverage 33% of jobs in predominantly ruralauthorities are public sector, compared with 27%for other authorities. That means that as publicspending is cut back, the economic, employmentand service delivery impacts are potentiallygreatest across rural communities.9

� Rural services will be more vulnerable than mostto public finance constraints since rural servicedelivery, even at its most effective, is moreexpensive per head of population than in urbanareas.10 Pressures to deliver more for less moneywill inevitably lead to further loss of local servicesaltogether – unless communities are empowered,as the term ‘Big Society’ suggests, to designappropriate local service levels and means ofdelivery, building on a rural culture of self-helpthat is already very high.

3 State of the Countryside 2010. CRC 119. Commission for Rural Communities, July 2010.http://ruralcommunities.gov.uk/files/sotc/sotc2010.pdf

4 State of the Countryside Update: Housing demand and supply. CRC Web 42. Commission for Rural Communities, February 2010.www.ruralcommunities.gov.uk/files/CRC%20Web%2042.pdf

5 Jobcentre Plus, Unfilled vacancies data. Office for National Statistics, June 20106 State of the Countryside 2010. CRC 119. Commission for Rural Communities, July 2010.

http://ruralcommunities.gov.uk/files/sotc/sotc2010.pdf7 State of the Countryside Update: Children and educational services. CRC Web 43. Commission for Rural Communities, March 2010.

http://ruralcommunities.gov.uk/files/CRC%20WEB43%20SOTC%20Update_TAGGED180310.pdf8 See www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/publications/documents/laeruralschoolclosures/9 See www.roseregeneration.co.uk/media/Cameron%20County%20Press%20Release%20Background.pdf10 In 2004 Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) commissioned Secta to review published evidence that

supports (or contradicts) the Rural Premium. Secta found that collectively the studies reviewed concluded that ‘rural areas facegreater difficulties in providing services to the same standard of effectiveness at the same levels of costs as in urban areas and thatas a result either cost is higher (in rural areas) or performance (response times, access and so on) is lower’

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The Rural Challenge

We have argued that the needs for change describedabove are paramount. But what form should thosechanges take? In this report we set out in some detail,across several policy areas, what needs to happen andwho needs to do it.

Much, if not most, of the actions needed must comefrom local government and agencies, together with thevoluntary and community sectors – including of coursemembers of the Rural Coalition itself. ‘Community-led’planning is the key to this approach. In other words, the solutions will need to come from the bottom up as well as, if not more than, from the top down. National Government will, however, clearly have a keyrole to play in articulating the vision and direction ofchange.

These solutions are summarised below in a series ofkey propositions. These propositions are set out inmuch more detail in the main report, and references tothe recommendations and associated text are givenwherever appropriate.

1 Creating and maintainingsustainable rural communities lies at theheart of the Rural Coalition’s message – a consensusabout the need for a more positive and balancedapproach to achieving social, economic andenvironmental well-being in our rural communities,shaped and delivered by community-led planning. Thiswill call for:

1.1 Local Planning Authorities to draw up localplans and strategies which are based on athorough understanding of local ruraleconomies and society, a comprehensiveassessment of the social, economic andenvironmental criteria which determinesustainable development, and a genuineincorporation of community-led plans andaspirations. These must not assume that ruralcommunities are inherently ‘unsustainable’, eventhe smaller ones.See Recommendations 1 and 3

1.2 Very short but clear messages in the new,reduced national planning policy frameworkwhich support and reflect the overriding objectivesof building and maintaining thrivingsustainable rural communities with thegenuine engagement and involvement oflocal people.See Recommendation 2

1.3 Rural communities which take advantage of theopportunities to instigate and completecommunity-led planning activities – helping thecommunity to decide on local priorities and takeresponsibility for making things happen, workingjointly with other communities where necessaryand appropriate.See Recommendations 1, 3 and 33

1.4 Members of the Rural Coalition and others toprovide advice and support for the above,through good practice which demonstrates,inspires and disseminates ways by whichcommunity-led sustainable planning can beimplemented.See the websites of the Rural Coalitionmembers, on the back cover of this report.

2 Meeting the affordable housingneeds of rural communities remains anurgent priority. In order to generate a step-change inprovision we propose that existing mechanisms such as Exceptions Sites and Developer Agreements shouldbe augmented by new ways to generate affordablehousing ‘from the bottom up’. We support the principle of local involvement contained in the‘Community Right to Build’ announced on 23 July. Itmust be right to offer local people a clear deal in which they can progress schemes which are based onlocal needs and ambitions, with a very high degree ofassurance that they will have an unbureaucratic andstraightforward response from the planning system.This Right to Build should remain within the framework of the current planning system. Nationalplanning policy should include a presumption that

Summary of key propositions

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The Rural Challenge

local plans will include such an approach. We wouldsee local plans setting out clear criteria along the linesset out in the following paragraph (although the preciseterms should be determined locally), with an assurancethat if these criteria are met, permission will be granted.

2.1 National Government and Local PlanningAuthorities should promote and supportplanning policies – including site allocations –that favour granting consent where localcommunities bring forward small schemes tomeet locally-identified needs that meet thefollowing criteria:

� Parish Council support as part of acommunity-led plan backed by the principalauthority councillors from that community.

� Sound evidence of need.� The scheme is affordable in perpetuity.� A suitable, viable site.� Appropriate scale.� Good design.

2.2 The ‘Community Right to Build’ and localpolicies giving effect to it should enableschemes to include one or more of thefollowing elements, dependent on the needsidentified by the community: market housing,affordable housing, workspace, retail space,recreational space, community facilities, and sitesfor renewable energy production. Approval of suchschemes should reflect the same criteria offeredunder 2.1, above.See Recommendations 4 and 5

2.3 The Rural Coalition and other bodies will offermore detailed advice, experience and an enablingrole on how the recommendations in paragraphs2.1 and 2.2 above can be implemented mosteffectively.

2.4 The Government should explore and develop withthe HCA (the Homes and Communities Agency),Housing Associations and Local Authoritiesoptions for intermediate affordable housing todeliver more affordable homes with less grant tomeet local needs.See Recommendation 8

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2.5 The Government should give Councils the freedomto manage the finances of their own housing,through reform of the Housing RevenueAccount (HRA) system, and the power to keepall income from selling existing Council homes.See Recommendation 6

2.6 The Government should bring forward advice andincentives to encourage landowners to providelow-cost land and/or affordable housing.See Recommendation 9

2.7 The forthcoming Decentralisation and LocalismBill should rule out clearly vexatious or trivialvillage green applications blocking communitydevelopment.See Recommendation 7

2.8 The Government’s proposals for a ‘Green Deal’ tofinance and deliver energy-efficiency improvementsto existing housing should take account of theparticular issues facing much rural housing.See Recommendation 11

3 Building thriving rural communities is not just about addressing ruraleconomic problems. Even more it is about exploringand developing the huge potential which rural areascontain for providing essential resources of food, waterand energy; for developing the green economy; and forembracing a much wider range of economic activities –especially those linked to IT and home-working. Wepropose that:

3.1 Where they have significant rural territory LocalEnterprise Partnerships should ensure thatpeople in rural areas (including sparselypopulated and peripheral areas) have a strongvoice, and that there are specific strategies andprogrammes for enterprise and employment inrural areas.See Recommendation 12

3.2 The Government should consult on how anyredesigned business support services can bestmeet the needs of businesses located in ruralareas.See Recommendation 13

3.3 The CLA (Country Land and Business Association)and the LG Group (Local Government Group)

The Rural Challenge

See Recommendation 4

commit to work together to encourage theadoption of innovative and distinctly ruralapproaches to employment and enterprise in rural areas.

3.4 Local government should promote, protect andmaintain a good supply of appropriate sitesand premises for all kinds of businesses insmaller rural communities, including new buildand conversion of farm buildings and farmdiversification.See Recommendations 14 and 15

3.5 The new Government should ensure that nationalplanning policy and guidance supportsalterations or extensions to the home toencourage appropriate local business growth (by making appropriate changes to Part 1 of the General Permitted DevelopmentOrder).See Recommendation 16

3.6 The Government should conduct a review of thetax regime in relation to work-based homeextensions and small-scale premises.See Recommendation 17

3.7 The RTPI (Royal Town Planning Institute), theTCPA (Town and Country Planning Association)and the LG Group will work together to exploremodel Local Development Orders which couldremove need for formal change of use,alteration or extension planning permissions to enable people to work or run a business from their home.

3.8 The Government proposals on broadband shouldencourage the most appropriate means bywhich communities can obtain high-speedbroadband access, whether throughcommercial supply or community-ledinitiatives.See Recommendation 18

3.9 New national policy on renewable energy should steer local plans to permit acceptablesmall-scale renewable energy developments in the countryside, supported by the RTPI, the TCPA and the LG Group working together to advise andencourage such schemes.See Recommendation 10

4 Delivering great local services hasalways been a challenge for rural areas and will be even more so in an age of public funding austerity. We believe that the way forward is to adopt new‘smarter’ approaches which are specifically tailored to rural circumstances and needs, rather thancontinuing with traditional (urban-based) models; and, crucially, to adopt approaches which tap localcommunity energies and knowledge both to shape and deliver those services, in line with theGovernment’s emphasis on the ‘Big Society’. Wepropose that:

4.1 Before finalising the ComprehensiveSpending Review, the Government shouldreview the proportionate impact in ruralareas and take proper account of theadditional costs faced by those providingessential services across rural areas.See Recommendation 19

4.2 When using geographical data of any kind,government and public sector agencies shouldensure that they have considered whether small-area data more reflective of the rural context exists, or can be obtained.See Recommendation 20

4.3 Universal Service Obligations are needed toensure that companies do not use newopportunities introduced for competition to‘cherry-pick’ urban areas at the cost ofdispersed rural communities.See Recommendation 21

4.4 The Government should ensure ‘rural proofing’of proposals, scaling back inspectionframeworks and activity to help public servicesand the third sector in rural areas to innovate inproviding low-cost service delivery.See Recommendation 22

4.5 The ‘Community Right to Bid’ needs toencompass community-led initiatives thatextend the reach of public services or providepartial solutions to retaining local provision as well as ‘like for like’ services viacommissioning.See Recommendations 23 and 23a

4.6 The Government should work with the Post Officeto achieve a full range of financial servicesthrough rural Post Office branches.See Recommendation 24

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The Rural Challenge

4.7 Public service providers should consider options forshared or multi-purpose service outlets, outreachand mobile services to serve small rural communities,before instituting cuts which leave them entirely orlargely without certain local services.See Recommendation 25

4.8 Government proposals to work with the privatesector to develop IT infrastructure should seek toimprove access and reduce the cost of providingpublic services in rural communities through e-services, including assessing the benefits ofwiring up community facilities like village halls asa first step.See Recommendation 26

4.9 Local and strategic transport planning shouldtake greater account of access issues fordispersed rural communities and considerinnovative programmes supportingcommunity solutions at less cost.See Recommendation 27

4.10 Some of the savings made by withdrawingtraditional services should be provided tosupport communities offering to preserve servicesthrough small-scale, lower-cost, community-led solutions.See Recommendations 25 and 34

5 Flourishing market towns are amainstay of rural economic and social life. They alsomake a big impact on the rural living environment. But too often that impact has not been improved bynew development over recent decades. We believe that the quality of new housing and supportingservices needs to be radically improved – to be moredistinctive and sensitive to local place, to be greener,and to engage the local community in ways whichensure that they genuinely meet local needs. Wepropose that:

5.1 The Government and the HCA should ensure thatbest practice know-how is available to LocalAuthorities/private sector partnerships to take awhole community approach to development,including jobs, services, mixed housing, andsustainable funding models for the long-termmanagement of green infrastructure in newcommunities. Community developments shouldadopt the Natural England recommendation thatpeople should have ‘an accessible natural green

space, of at least 2 hectares in size, no more than300 metres (5 minutes’ walk) from home’.See Recommendations 30, 31 and 32

5.2 Local Authorities should always involve thecommunity in shaping sustainable proposalsthrough effective participation such as ‘Enquiryby Design’ and ‘Planning for Real’.See Recommendation 29

5.3 The LG Group, the TCPA, the RTPI, CPRE(Campaign to Protect Rural England), and CABE(the Commission for Architecture and the BuiltEnvironment) will work together with otherrelevant bodies on help and advice to developmarket towns in ways which produce attractiveand sustainable settlements, building on theexcellent standards set by the Eco-towns PPS.See Recommendation 28

6 Empowering communities is a centraltenet of the Rural Coalition’s vision for the future. It isalso a fundamental part of the Coalition Government’s‘Big Society’ agenda. Fortunately, rural communitiesenjoy a long history of innovative and sustainedinvolvement in decisions and activities which affecttheir lives. This experience provides an excellentfoundation for rural communities taking on an evenbigger role in the drive towards more localised policy-making and action. However, community-led or‘bottom-up’ planning will not just happen by itself. Itwill need very focused help and support. We proposethat:

6.1 National and local government should recogniseand adopt community-led planning as ‘bestpractice’ as part of putting in place themechanisms to underpin the ‘Big Society’.See Recommendation 33

6.2 To deliver the ‘Big Society’, localism andempowering communities, the Government needsto start by building local capacity for delivery –for example through support for local enablers andactivists, advice and training, and modest fundingopportunities.See Recommendation 37

6.3 Parish and Town Councils should become the guardian’ of the community-led plan,monitoring progress and regularly refreshing thepriorities in the light of changing circumstances.See Recommendations 35 and 36

The Rural Challenge

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6.4 Local Authorities should recognise that there willoften be a very strong case for individualcommunities obtaining visible benefits,community facilities and community-ledservices from accepting more development intheir area, to support community facilities andcommunity-led services. The forthcomingDecentralisation and Localism Bill should ensurethat there are straightforward mechanisms toenable this.See Recommendation 38

We need to act now

These measures will not only improve economic, socialand environmental sustainability; they will create avirtuous cycle. If more affordable housing, betterservices and a more vibrant economy means people ona broader range of incomes can afford to live in ruralcommunities, it may increase their social diversity andsustainability. If they support a broader range ofcommunity services, shops and work, then people willneed to travel less, not more.

In terms of housing, jobs or services, existing or newdevelopment, or stretching increasingly limitedgovernment funding further, we need to move awayfrom asking ‘Is this settlement sustainable?’ – which toooften leads to a decision to prevent any development,cut back services, and refuse any change. Rather, wemust ask how can we enhance the sustainability of thiscommunity, taking account of social, economic andenvironmental concerns – which means embracing theright sort of change. And the people we need to ask firstare the communities themselves.

Finally, the Rural Coalition itself is committed tobuilding on this report by continuing to worktogether to influence the thinking and behaviourof national and local politicians and planningprofessionals.

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The Rural Challenge

What we said in our prospectus:

‘The protection of the built heritage, naturalenvironment and landscape in and around rural villagescontinues to be critical. But when protection becomesthoughtless – when the immediate instinct is to say noto almost everything – then ‘protection’ can have aperversely negative effect. Villages are denied thechance to respond organically to change, and so toremain vibrant living, working communities.‘Sustainability’ doesn’t mean a slavish adherence towhat exists – no development at all can lead to thelocal school, shop and pub closing for lack of custom asthe community ages, or as commuters and holidayhomes displace local families.

‘Villages need to be encouraged and empowered tomake the changes needed to sustain them. Affordablehousing can meet the needs of those working andgrowing up in rural communities who could neverotherwise afford a local home, and local jobs helpsustain schools and other services that may close ifworking families can no longer afford to live there.’

Government references ‘smaller rural communities’ asthose settlements with populations of fewer than3,00011 – the often tiny rural villages and hamletsscattered across the English countryside. Suchsettlements are home to 65% of all rural residents, some6.16million people.12

Housing need in smaller ruralcommunities

Through the Government’s commitment to the ‘BigSociety’ and ‘Local Housing Trusts’, there is realpotential for enhancing the sustainability of many of

Challenge 1Meeting rural housing need

these smaller rural communities by taking decisionslocally, with local people empowered to deliver thedevelopment that they want and need.

It is clear that most rural communities are facing aparticularly severe housing crisis. As a result of socialhousing stock declining because Right to Buy saleshave not been replaced, and the slow pace of new ruralnon-market affordable house building, the figures today(including Housing Association stock) show that only13% of houses in rural areas are affordable homes,compared with 21% in urban areas.13

Yet the very visible legacy of relatively recentdevelopment in some villages is one of poorly designedhousing, unsympathetic to its surroundings. Othervillages have retained much of their character onlythrough little or no development taking place. This hascontributed across many rural villages and hamlets to aresistance to more housing development of any kind, bothmarket and affordable homes, of whatever scale or design.

That mood is now changing. The English countryside isan asset which should rightly be protected againstindiscriminate and inappropriate development. But thelandscape and environmental impact of thedevelopment of a handful of sensitively locatedaffordable homes to serve small rural communities mustnot be exaggerated. As the symptoms of housingshortage gradually accumulate and undermine thesocial, economic and environmental sustainability ofvillages, saying ‘no’ to any kind of development canbecome part of the problem, not the solution.

Recognising this, many more communities are adoptinga positive attitude towards provision of affordablehousing for those with a local connection. This becomesstronger support (and more landowners come forward)

11 See Planning Policy Statement 3: Housing. Department for Communities and Local Government, 2010.www.communities.gov.uk/publications/planningandbuilding/pps3housing

12 State of the Countryside 2004. CA 170. Countryside Agency, 2004. Figures derived using Office of the Deputy Prime Minister andOffice for National Statistics Urban Areas Settlements with Census 2001 data

13 Housing Strategy Statistical Appendix (HSSA) 2007. Department for Communities and Local Government, 2007.www.communities.gov.uk/housing/housingresearch/housingstatistics/housingstatisticsby/localauthorityhousing/dataforms/357553/hssa200607/

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The Rural Challenge

when people become aware that the affordable housingwill be kept in perpetuity for local needs and that itsdesign will be sympathetic to local character. There is awide range of guidance recently made available to aidthis14 – in each case, however, the process starts by thecommunity itself developing a shared understanding ofthe ways in which the sustainability of the communitycan be preserved and enhanced.

Recommendation 1Local authorities should formally take intoaccount community-led plans, where they havebeen developed, in the preparation of local plans.

Recommendation 2Most decisions on the future development orotherwise of rural communities must be takenlocally. This does not require the current 2,500pages of national planning guidance, butsustainable development in the countryside is of national importance and deserves some clearstatements of principle in any new nationalplanning policy framework – including that local planning policy must balance the protection and enhancement of the natural andbuilt environment in the countryside withensuring the economic and social viability of rural communities.

Recommendation 3Local plans should be based on a thoroughunderstanding of local rural economies andsociety, a comprehensive assessment of thesocial, economic, and environmental criteriadetermining sustainable development, andgenuine and effective engagement with local communities (individually and collectively).

Rural Exception Sites – the story so far

‘Rural Exception Sites’ can already permit affordablehousing development to meet local needs incommunities of (usually) less than 3,000 population, onsites where this would not normally be allowed – forhousing guaranteed to be affordable in perpetuity,accommodating households meeting the localconnection criteria with the parish or village. If no-one

‘local’ meeting the criteria comes forward, a ‘cascade’comes into play, and the housing is offered to people insimilar need in surrounding parishes.

There are many good examples of how exception sitescan work – but as the system functions at the moment it is failing to reach its potential. At present,getting such proposals through the planning system is often challenging and protracted. It is clear fromexperience that successful exception site developments are characterised by ‘bottom-up’community-led schemes facilitated by engagementwith the local community, often through the ParishCouncil but also with the strategic support of the localplanning and housing authorities – and starting with adebate about planning the needs and future of thecommunity, before specific schemes are considered.This engagement is the fundamental first step todelivering more affordable housing in many ruralcommunities. Without it, opposition grows, anddelivery stalls.

Our new approach – empower the parish

The Government has already recognised the importanceof empowering small communities, with proposals forLocal Housing Trusts. We share much of that vision, and believe that to work effectively itneeds to be underpinned by simple, clear criteriaempowering the community directly through the parish(or clusters of parishes).

Local Housing Trusts are seen as a way of overcomingthe acute shortage of appropriate housing for localpeople in rural areas. The Carnegie Commissionconsidered that Trust models offered particularly strong opportunities for providing affordable ruralhousing as a community-owned asset, and called fornational and regional support to ensure that the earlypioneers will be followed by a mainstream socialmovement to transform rural affordable housingprovision.

Parish support should be a trigger for suchcommunity-led affordable housing schemes, subject tothe five further criteria below (need, scale, viability,affordability in perpetuity, and design). Because

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14 Including Affordable Rural Housing and the Historic Environment. English Heritage, 2009; Creating a Sense of Place: A designguide. Business in the Community/The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment, 2006; and Affordable Housing Keeps VillagesAlive. Campaign to Protect Rural England/National Housing Federation/Commission for Rural Communities/CountrysideAlliance/Action with Communities in Rural England, July 2010

The Rural Challenge

� Good design, agreed with the community.Successful developments depend on sensitivedesign that responds to its surroundings. A fullplanning application, setting out every designdetail, is not a requirement for exception sites,although it is commonplace because it allows allaspects of the scheme to be agreed. However,agreement on detailed design may be easier oncethe principle of the proposal has been agreed withthe community and preliminary ‘outline’permission granted and the site secured.

Good design

Good design should consider the following:

� Infrastructure, including green infrastructure, hasto be designed in at an early stage to help avoidover-reliance on the car.

� Design should generally be simple and ‘tenure-blind’ in the context of other buildings.

� Building materials and styles should reflect localprecedent, even if it is not possible for them to belocally sourced.

� Individual homes should be grouped to endorseand support the village context, and shouldcontribute to a strong street scene.

� Parking solutions should not dominate a scheme,and should be carefully considered to reduce theimpact of parking spaces on the character andlayout of the development.

� Details of features such as doors, windows,chimneys, roof pitch, metalwork and joineryshould be carefully considered for theirappropriateness.

� Lifetime homes principles must be applied to allschemes. Long-term flexibility – and thechanging needs of occupiers – should beanticipated in internal arrangement as far aspossible.

� The overall design should enhance a villagescene, rather than detract from it.

Source: CABE ( advice to the Rural Coalition)

most Parish Councils are elected, they are accountable.Where a Parish Council is supporting a proposal thatmeets these criteria, the Local Planning Authorityshould have a duty to respond positively. The right ofthe parish to develop detailed proposals for a smallaffordable housing development would be an importantresponsibility. Parishes would not carry a veto overhousing development, ensuring that other proposals arenot prevented from coming forward. Butparishes/communities now need a clear right to initiatecommunity-led affordable housing schemes – a simplerand more accountable approach than the 90% supportrequired in a local referendum envisaged byGovernment.

The following are the key criteria for community-led development:

� Evidence of need for housing that will beaffordable in perpetuity and reserved for peoplewith a local connection. Local Authorities mustmaintain an up-to-date assessment of housingneed in their Strategic Housing MarketAssessment – parish by parish, looking at thespecific needs and circumstances of eachcommunity as part of the community-led parishplanning process. A simple local needs survey canprovide this information where it is not alreadyavailable.

� Appropriate scale and style. Community-ledaffordable housing needs to be relevant to theexisting community and its needs, taking intoaccount the value of the landscape, the characterof the settlement and the site of the proposal. Inthese communities, it is locally made decisionsabout half a dozen or a dozen homes that arecrucial to their sustainability, not national,regional or even district targets. However, whenlarger-scale development is considered, it needs tobe in the context of wider planning issues.

� A viable, available site. The site must meetbasic planning requirements as stipulated in localplanning policy – for example concerning floodingor subsidence, difficult and/or dangerous access,very high environmental significance ordislocation from village services or the settlementpattern.

� The affordable homes will be kept affordable in perpetuity, to meet local needsusing a transparent ‘parish cascade’.

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The Rural Challenge

The ‘Big Society’ proposals on Local Housing Trustsenvisage a ‘presumption for granting’ applications fromcommunities to develop plans for land to support arange of needs.

To deliver this aspiration, it will be crucial that suchTrust mechanisms enable communities to fill a widerange of gaps and deficiencies in current provision offacilities and services, as well as housing. This could bea mix of housing, employment land, communityfacilities and services, biodiversity, recreation, and land-based community enterprises for green energy andrecycling. The exact mix would require a Trust proposalto reflect a robust evidence base on community needsand have significant community support.

As communities take on responsibilities for a range ofassets, the Carnegie Commission recognised that thereneeds to be a parallel growth in the provision oftechnical advice – support focused on making sure thatacquisition results in long-term viability rather thanliability, with a focus on a realistic business plan, andwhere necessary with investment and revenuecommitments or endowments alongside the land orbuilding.

The National Housing Federation has recently agreed to host the National Community Land TrustNetwork to help overcome these barriers by providingtechnical support to local Trusts, and to work withmortgage lenders and the Homes and CommunitiesAgency (HCA) to ensure that funding streams areavailable.

As proposed by the Coalition Government, LocalHousing Trusts could generate income through the sale of open market housing, and by the renting ofworkspace and community enterprise initiatives thatmight be included. The Development Trusts Association(DTA) points to the need to incentivise new approaches to finance, including promotingcommunity share and bond issues, with communityinvestment by individuals being linked to Gift Aid taxrelief.

The DTA also suggests that, in recession, there is aonce-in-a-generation opportunity for community assetacquisition in order to provide the foundation forresilient communities. It is exploring community ‘land-banking’, in which the community acquires land forfuture community uses, and other fast-trackmechanisms that enable a fast response to theeconomic downturn.

The Coalition Government’s proposed criteria onsupport for a Local Housing Trust initially focused on the proportion of residents whosupport the scheme. The Rural Coalition believesthis to be potentially divisive and self-defeating.We believe that the criteria should lie within themechanism already proposed for the communityto decide collaboratively on local priorities andactions – i.e. community-led planning. The criteriashould relate to whether the proposal has been wellresearched via a high-quality community-led planprocess, has a strong viable business plan which meetsthe community’s needs, and is supported by the ParishCouncil.

Because they are community led, local Trusts are seenas providing a particularly clear reassurance that homeswill remain affordable in perpetuity to the benefit of thelocal community, potentially encouraging greatercommunity support and offers of low-cost or free land.

However, such Trusts are not without difficulties.Unless they partner an existing social housing provider,it is difficult to access funding and expertise in bothdelivery and management of the development,potentially raising costs and long-term managementissues. It is also important that a clearly fair, criteria-based and impartial process is set up to allocate thehomes to local people, and that they are then wellmanaged.

These are all issues that need to be overcome, usuallythrough a partnership with an existing affordablehousing provider (or an established umbrella Trustsorganisation with the scale and experience toovercome these hurdles).

The Rural Coalition also believes that other aspects ofLocal Housing Trust implementation need carefulexploration. The behaviour of landowners, anddevelopers with options on land in anticipation of, atsome time, succeeding with open market planningapplications, may inflate land prices, reducing theviability of community-owned schemes. Care should betaken to ensure that Local Housing Trust modelsgenuinely stem from the community and remain underthe control of local people rather than external partnerswhose interests may lie elsewhere.

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The Rural Challenge

forward more investment in affordable housing. TheHCA Local Authority New Build Fund gave Councilsaccess to funding to build 4,000 homes in the next year. But Councils have the potential to build manymore affordable homes, and to redevelop and refurbish many more existing properties, if key steps aretaken.

Recommendation 6To maximise the ability of Local Authorities tosupport affordable housing delivery financially,the Government should:� Give Councils the freedom to manage the

finances of their own housing, throughimplementing reform of the HousingRevenue Account (HRA) system.

� Give Councils the power to keep all incomefrom selling existing Council homes.Councils can keep funding from the sale ofnewly built homes under the Right to Buylegislation (currently 75% of funds from thesale of existing properties still goes to theTreasury).16

Unlocking the barriers placed by village greenapplications

There is evidence that increasing vexatious use is beingmade of the Town and Village Green registrationprocess to slow down or block affordable housingdevelopments, despite local support.

Designed to preserve village greens as the traditionalfocus for village life and the playing of games, thisstatus has increasingly been sought on inappropriate orunsuitable sites, for example on existing agriculturalland. The intention has clearly been primarily to thwartthe planning process and in many cases prevent theprovision of much needed affordable housing. At theleast, such claims cause considerable delay and(unrecoverable) costs to landowners and Councils. Atworst they will prevent alternative uses in perpetuity ifsuccessful.

Recommendation 4We welcome the Government’s commitment to community-led development and commend the Local Housing Trust proposals in principle as a contribution to the developingpolicy. But the Government should reconsiderwhether the potential for as few as 10% ofresidents to block development, and therequirement for community ownership,undermine the intention of the policy. Wepropose that local communities have assurance that if they bring forward a smallscheme to meet locally-identified needs, and itmeets six key criteria (Parish Council supportagreed by the community in a community-ledplan, evidence of need, appropriate scale, asuitable viable site, affordable in perpetuity, and good design), local planning policy shouldfavour granting consent.

Recommendation 5An appropriate extension of policy on LocalHousing Trusts should enable community-owned schemes to comprise a mix of uses,according to the communities’ needs – whichmight include one or more of: affordable housing, workspace, retail, recreational space,community facilities, and sites for renewableenergy production.

How do we afford the affordablehousing?

Unlocking the potential of local authority finance

National barriers to affordable housing affect rural areas as much as urban ones – in particular access tofunding and investment, especially given the impact of the economic downturn on the implementation ofplanning obligations (Section 106 agreements15) whichwere used to deliver much of the affordable housingbuilt before the credit crunch and subsequentrecession.

Recently we have seen some positive steps towardsunlocking the potential for Councils to help bring

15

15 Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 allows a Local Planning Authority to enter into a legally binding agreementor planning obligation with a landowner in association with the granting of planning permission

16 Housing Revenue Account Manual 2006-2007 Edition. Department for Communities and Local Government, July 2007.www.communities.gov.uk/documents/housing/pdf/hramanual0607.pdf

The Rural Challenge

options may increasingly step into the gap. They allowsmall communities to deliver much of the affordablehousing they need, with much less or no Governmentgrant – and while not affordable for all, they canaddress the needs of working people on low incomes inrural areas; the people who are currently least likely tobe able to access a home since they do not havesufficient need to be allocated one of the few socialrented homes, and yet do not have sufficient income toafford a home on the open market.

Recommendation 8The Government should explore and developwith the HCA, Housing Associations and LocalAuthorities options for intermediate affordablehousing to deliver more affordable homes withless grant to meet local needs, to supportinformed decision-making by HousingAssociations and Local Authorities on whatwould work in particular communities.

Unlocking the potential of landowners todeliver affordable housing

Rural landowners contribute to the delivery of affordablerural housing in a number of ways. Directly, rurallandowners provide around a third of private rentedhousing in rural areas, much of it at controlled rents.Many rural landowners still provide housing for theirworkers and retired workers, either free of charge or forvery low payment. Indirectly, many landowners havemade land available to rural Housing Associations,sometimes free of charge and often at significantlybelow market value. Without the generosity of rurallandowners, the housing crisis in the countryside wouldbe significantly worse, and Government shouldrecognise this.

When surveyed for the Taylor Review by the RoyalInstitution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), the mostsignificant factor for rural landowners consideringreleasing more land for affordable housing at adiscounted rate was the assurance that it willremain affordable and for local people inperpetuity. In some cases, rural landowners are keento bring forward their own funded, built and managedschemes to allay their fears about release of propertiesonto the open market, but this is not always allowed onexception sites. These and similar issues wereaddressed in Guidance for Local Authorities onIncentivising Landowners to Bring forward Land forAffordable Housing on Rural Exception Sites, the

Recommendation 7The Government should include in theforthcoming Decentralisation and Localism Billprovision to make the local plan the solemechanism whereby green and open space isdesignated and protected; or at least (i) introduce a fast-track preliminary stage to theTown and Village Green registration processwhereby groundless and vexatious claims can be dismissed rapidly and (ii) rule out applications after planning permission has been granted for development on the land.

Unlocking the potential of intermediatehousing

We also need to think more broadly about what wemean by affordable, as this greatly affects the cost interms of subsidy, and there are several different forms of‘affordable’ housing:

� Traditional rented Council or Housing Associationproperties, allocated to those in priority need andrented at well below market prices – requiringsignificant grant to build.

� Part-ownership, capped-price and low-rent modelstermed ‘intermediate affordable housing’. Thereare a range of such schemes designed to allowpeople to buy an initial low-cost share in theownership in the property and ’staircase up’ theirownership as they can afford to. In rural areas, toguarantee affordability in perpetuity, this is limitedby Government rules to a maximum of 80% of theopen-market value.

� Outright sale with prices capped in perpetuity atan affordable level (generally a multiple of localincomes or a fixed percentage discount from openmarket value).

� Low-rent (but not as low as social rent) modelscan meet local needs, especially for those in low-paid employment.

Intermediate housing (a term covering all but the first ofthese forms) needs less grant support to build than socialrent housing requires. Indeed, intermediate affordablehousing is delivered without any subsidy in some areas,especially where land is offered free or at low cost. At atime when Government affordable housing deliverygrant is set to be sharply cut, these intermediate

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The Rural Challenge

consultation by CLG17 (the Department forCommunities and Local Government) on this aspect ofthe Taylor Review, and the new Government shouldurgently take forward these issues. The Governmentshould also consider tangible encouragement andincentives, such as tax incentives to help speed up thedelivery of affordable rural housing. Governmentguidelines on incentivising landowners to bringforward land for rural affordable housing will also helpto ensure that the use of such incentives is not seen toundermine the integrity and transparency of theplanning system.

Recommendation 9The Government should bring forward advice on how Local Authorities and communities canencourage landowners to provide low-cost landand/or affordable housing, building on the CLGconsultation on guidance for local authorities on incentivising landowners to bring forwardland for affordable housing on rural exceptionsites.

17 Guidance for Local Authorities on Incentivising Landowners to Bring Forward Land for Affordable Housing on Rural Exception Sites.Department for Communities and Local Government, November 2009.www.communities.gov.uk/documents/planningandbuilding/pdf/incentivisingconsultation.pdf

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The Rural Challenge

What we said in our prospectus:

‘Not all economic developments are good and not alleconomic developments are bad. To distinguishbetween the two, on a case-by-case basis, is seldomeasy. It seems safer to say no. As a result, potentiallyvaluable kinds of economic development are all toooften blocked in principle, without considering thecontribution they can make to supporting both the localcommunity and the national economy – and withoutundesirable consequences for heritage or environment.The result is that local jobs in rural communities areamongst the lowest paid in the UK – 20% below thenational average. Vital opportunities to use the land tomeet the challenge of climate change are missed, andthe fruitful development of both rural communities andthe national economy is held back.

‘Climate change makes land-based businesses evenmore important, and modern communications makes all kinds of businesses more workable in ruralcommunities than ever before. Planning policies need torecognise that, if proposed developments are in keepingwith their location and of suitable scale, they should beassessed with optimism. And if they seem likely to helplocal employment needs and increase the economic,social and environmental sustainability of even thesmallest communities, they should be warmlywelcomed.’

The importance of strong ruraleconomies

As food security moves sharply up the agenda, sorightly has the recognition of our farms and foodproducers. However, the rural economy is not just about farms and land-based business. Millions of people live and work in the countryside, at least half amillion businesses are based there, and rural business is worth nearly £145,00million to the national economyevery year.18

Creating and maintaining strong rural economies iscritical to supporting sustainable and vibrant ruralcommunities. Strong rural economies offer those livingin rural areas better opportunities for work in their local community. More and better-quality localemployment opportunities help to reduce the out-migration of younger people, and retain skilledgraduates. Being able to live and work closer to, or in,the home, also helps to deliver national sustainabilityobjectives by reducing the need to commute longdistances to work, and so minimising harmful vehicleemissions.

Rural economic development also helps to revitalise thewider local economy – at the local level providingspending power and a daytime presence to support andact as a catalyst for other local businesses, shops andservices such as Post Offices, and so benefiting thewhole community; at national level harnessing theentrepreneurial and exporting potential of businesses inrural areas.

Rural entrepreneurs, rural poverty

Taken as a whole, rural areas in England are moreentrepreneurial and generate higher levels of businesscreation per head of population than all Inner London.The survival rate of most new rural businesses is high,with a lower insolvency rate among rural businessesthan those located in urban areas and nationallybetween April 2007 and December 2009. On manyindicators, on aggregate, the performance of the ruraleconomies is comparable to performance in urbanareas.

However, the overall figures conceal the fact that inmany rural areas average incomes for those whoactually work there are much lower than the urbanaverage. Statistics for rural incomes do not usuallyshow this, since they are artificially inflated by thoseresidents who commute to work in better-paid jobs in

Challenge 2Building thriving rural economies

18 State of the Countryside 2010. CRC 119. Commission for Rural Communities, July 2010.http://ruralcommunities.gov.uk/files/sotc/sotc2010.pdf

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The Rural Challenge

� To promote business in all rural communities andthe wider countryside, subject to conditions.

� To protect and maintain a good supply ofappropriate sites and premises for all kinds ofbusinesses.

� To unlock the potential of re-using historic farmbuildings.

� To encourage home-based businesses.

� To invest in extending high-quality broadbandthroughout rural communities.

Low-carbon economy

We must seize the potential presented by the shift to a low-carbon economy to build a thrivingnew rural economy around local food, sustainable energy, and information technology.

Unlocking the opportunities of the low-carbon economymust be a priority for the new Government. Renewableenergy potential in the countryside, low-carbon farmingand local food, and local employment rather thancommuting – all of these are essential to meet thenational challenge of tackling environmentalconstraints and climate change, as well as developingfar more resilient and flexible rural economies.

There are massive opportunities for the UK to reduce itsgreenhouse gas emissions and contribute to tacklingglobal climate change in the countryside. Currently ruraldwellers find themselves having more carbon-intensivelifestyles than their urban dwelling counterparts.21 Onthe other hand, a strong tradition of self-help, communityaction and business entrepreneurship provides a uniquerural advantage in tackling climate change. A growingnumber of villages and rural towns are at the leadingedge of engaging the whole community in low-carbonactivity, focusing on sustaining livelihoods andcommunity spirit over the long term.

It is also in the countryside that the enormous potentialfor low- and zero-carbon energy solutions mainly

19 Bullets points 1-3: Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE). Office for National Statistics, 2006. Analysed by Institute for PublicPolicy Research for Working out of Poverty. IPPR, 2008 – cited in England’s Rural Areas: Steps to release their economic potential –Advice from the Rural Advocate to the Prime Minister. 2008, p.22.www.ruralcommunities.gov.uk/files/crc67_englands_rural_areas1.pdf

20 Rural Economies: Stepping stones to healthier futures. Countryside Agency, 2003 – cited in Rural Strategy 2004. Defra, 2004, p.6521 D. Satterthwaite: ‘Cities’ contribution to global warming: notes on the allocation of greenhouse gas emissions’. Environment &

Urbanization, 2008, Vol. 20, No.2, 539-49

urban centres and wealthy residents who have retiredto the countryside:

� People who are actually working in rural areasearn on average £1,674 each year less than theurban average.

� People working in the most urban areas haveaverage annual incomes in excess of £7,000 morethan those working in the most rural areas.

� In the most rural areas, 28% of jobs are low paid,compared with 18% in the most urban areas.19

� 22% of self-employed people in rural areas are inpoverty, compared with 8% in urban areas.20

For many rural businesses, growth is stunted by a lackof appropriate premises and extremely limited scope forexpanding or modernising existing premises. Planningpolicy has frequently failed to respond to appropriaterural economic activity, often as a result of theinflexibility of interpretation of national policy at a locallevel towards rural business growth, and often based onpreconceptions about what is appropriately a ‘rural’business type. If rural economies are held back, so arerural wages. The hopes and needs of rural communitiesfor better jobs and housing, transport, services andleisure are similar to those of people in urban areas. Yetmany in the countryside feel that government (nationaland local) does not fully understand the relationshipbetween rural businesses (whether land based or not),rural life and the environment.

Better support for rural economies

In order to better support rural economies and to buildon the already solid base of business start-ups, and thedisproportionate numbers of small and home-basedbusinesses, a number of planning barriers must beovercome, and opportunities taken, as considered in theremainder of this section:

� To seize the potential presented by the shift to alow-carbon economy.

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The Rural Challenge

resides. Land-based businesses will make a substantialcontribution to the mitigation of climate change bysupplying renewable energy, extracting energy fromagricultural and forestry co-products, harnessing hydropower, and growing specialist crops for fuel.

Here too rests the potential for much lower carbon foodsolutions, such as local food, low-input farming (whereeffective), upstream management of inputs into water toreduce pollution, and better management of flood risksby harnessing nature.

Food chain emissions, other than from land use change,contribute approximately 20% of UK emissions, withmeat and dairy products responsible for 50% of foodchain emissions. Including emissions from land usechange, in the UK and from land overseas producingfood for UK consumption, increases the food chain’stotal emission to 30% of all UK carbon emissions. Low-carbon farming and renewables offer the largestpotential positive contribution by farms and estates tothe mitigation of climate change, by enabling othersectors to reduce their emissions. Similarly, the use of

Case studyCentre for Renewable Energy, East Midlands

In its latest project, the Centre for RenewableEnergy (CORE) aims to tap into the demand forexpertise and the need for companies to specialisein developing green technologies, sourcingmaterials and selling equipment. This isparticularly important in the current climate, withincreasing Government pressure on extending andexpanding renewable energy sources andtechnologies.

The CORE facility is now a showcase forrenewable energy technologies. It provides expertadvice to potential customers and offers managed workspace for businesses operating in the sector.Potential customers can see the technologies in action because they are incorporated into the fabric of thebuildings. Biomass heating, ground and air source heat pumps, rainwater harvesting, a wind turbine,electricity-generating photovoltaics and solar panels are some of the sustainable energy resources thatwill be integrated into the carbon-neutral development. The overall aim is for the building to manufacturemore heat, cooling, electricity and power through green technologies than it uses during its day-to-dayoperation. This is achieved by utilising carbon-neutral renewable energy products which are set togenerate enough electricity and heat to supply the wider community.

CORE is acknowledged as an excellent example of how to bring better-quality jobs to the countryside in asympathetic, sustainable and economic manner. It is anticipated that CORE will create 21 new jobs overthe next four years as emerging renewable businesses take the opportunity to move into the shared officearea and work collectively to maximise their commercial potential.

anaerobic digestion to manage farm by-products (suchas slurries) and other wastes, not only to reduce carbondioxide emissions on farm, but also to displace thecarbon dioxide burden of bought-in artificial fertilizer,offers a win-win way forward.

Furthermore, it is suggested that forest expansiontowards 25% land cover, with an associated drive to usethe renewable forest products to substitute forconstruction materials and fossil fuels, could provideapproximately 10% of the emissions reduction requiredto meet Government targets for emissions reduction by2050.

One of the most effective ways to engage people fromall walks of rural life in all these opportunities isthrough shared and co-operative ownership andinvestment, giving everyone a stake, regardless ofincome or standing. An example is community-ownedlocal generation/recycling/heating initiatives. As yet,however, the communities themselves gain little butcosts from much of the move to low-carbon economies.The benefits of sustainable energy production in the

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The Rural Challenge

countryside are rarely transferred to local people, aslower energy costs or a community share of the incomeare not made available to them.

The shift towards market-based mechanisms such asFeed-In Tariffs22 and Renewable Heat Incentives23 iswelcome and will boost investment by many ruralbusinesses and households with access to capital. Butunless attention is invested into finding ways ofopening up these markets to the vast majority of ruralhouseholders and communities, the potential tomainstream low-carbon activity will not be realised,and it will remain a niche activity for the wealthy.

A central point of advice, training and capacity-buildingon the range of rural community ownership models andcommunity interest companies would turn untappedinterest into tangible returns. As rural communityleaders, Local Authorities and Parish Councils have akey role to play in joining up and communicatingclimate change policy and opportunities from centralgovernment to the grassroots. Using local powers toraise finance and access cheaper capital for re-investment in local low-carbon activity that the wholecommunity benefits from should be seen a central rolefor Councils. Policies that encourage low-carboninvestment in rural community assets and local energyand fuel networks coupled with strong local leadershipfrom Parish and Town Councils will enable every ruralcommunity to realise long-term sustainable benefitsfrom climate change action.

National policies which enable local Councils and ruralcommunities to unlock the potential of our countrysideto help meet the challenge of climate change, and in sodoing help rural communities build their ownenvironmental, economic and social sustainability, aremassively overdue. Such an approach needs to start byenabling rural communities to benefit from thechanges we all need to make.

Recommendation 10New national policy on renewable energy should steer local plans to permit small-scalerenewable energy developments in thecountryside unless there are unacceptableadverse impacts on other national and localplanning objectives.

Recommendation 11We welcome the Government’s proposals for a‘Green Deal’ to finance and deliver energyefficiency improvements to existing housing. The detailed design of this programme needs totake into account that costs will be higher wherehousing is less concentrated, and that in somerural areas high-cost building types (for example solid wall) predominate. Governmentshould carefully test the viability of whollyprivately financed models in rural areas, andensure any necessary top-up via supplierobligation funding. It should also ensure that thefranchising arrangements for advisers andsuppliers do not exclude smaller businesses.

Our commitmentThe RTPI, the TCPA and the LG Group commit to work together with other relevant bodies oninformation and advice for local authoritiesseeking to encourage small-scale renewableenergy generation in rural areas, to help themassess properly local impact and viability through their planning and other functions.

Promoting rural business

We must promote business in all ruralcommunities and the wider countryside, subjectto acceptable local impacts and encouraging asustainable local economy.

Promoting diverse rural economic development that isappropriate in scale and impact is vital to building amore sustainable future for both rural communities andthe nation. Policy must both meet needs and buildsustainability in every community to encourage andmaintain local employment opportunities and risingincomes, and should not focus only on larger urbancentres or even market towns.

22 Feed-in Tariffs (FITs) became available in Great Britain on 1 April 2010. Under this scheme energy suppliers make regular paymentsto householders and communities who generate their own electricity from renewable or low-carbon sources

23 The Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) will provide financial support for those who install renewable heating which qualifies forsupport under the scheme 21

The Rural Challenge

One in three rural households do not have amains gas connection and are reliant on heatingoil, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) or solid fuel for their heating. Not having a mains gasconnection has a significant impact on theprevalence of fuel poverty: 23% of all households that have no mains gas connectionare living in fuel poverty (compared with 12% ofall households that have a mains gas connection).

this does not replace a national prescription with onebased only on a focus on larger urban communities asthe employment hubs for scattered rural communities.Commuting into town is not the most sustainableemployment solution for rural communities – we needto return to seeing every community as its own hub fora high proportion of services and employment.

The focus of current rural planning policies on largersettlements as ‘hubs’ fails to understand that largetracts of England’s countryside are characterised by ahistoric and present-day pattern of dispersedsettlements based on hamlets and farmsteads, ratherthan large villages. We believe that, in somecircumstances, reinforcing the historic pattern throughsmall-scale development at the hamlet/ farmstead levelis more appropriate and potentially more sustainablethan concentrating development and services inatypically large settlements. English Heritage’s workwith the High Weald AONB (Area of OutstandingNatural Beauty) is a national exemplar of goodpractice,24 as is the exemplar at Hathersage village inthe Peak District National Park (see the case study boxon the facing page).

Promoting sustainable economic development in ruralareas can potentially reduce energy use and emissionsby allowing people to live and work in the same locality,much as they would in the city. It is important torecognise that encouraging an architect or IT expert inthe village to take on a local secretary or a localgraduate to grow the business is as valid a form of ruralemployment today as adding value to local foodproduction. Large office developments are for the town– but two or three small office units, perhaps where agarage used to be, or incorporated into a community-ledaffordable housing scheme, may be exactly what thevillage needs to retain and enhance local employmentopportunities.

Recommendation 12Where they have significant rural territory, Local Enterprise Partnerships should ensure that they have a strong rural voice, and specificstrategies and programmes for enterprise andemployment in rural areas. These strategiesshould carefully consider in particular how ruraleconomies function and can be sustained, whileprotecting the character of the countryside.

Land-based activities such as agriculture, and woodland/forestry continue to underpin the management of ourcountryside, and continue to shape the evolution of thehistoric landscape, which in future will include significantland use change in response to global demands forfood/energy/environmental security. New farm buildingswill be needed to meet modern agricultural practices.

‘Land-based’ activities are a vital part of our ruraleconomies and the maintenance of the countryside.Indeed, in the face of climate change they are of morecritical importance than ever – we have alreadydiscussed how local food production and sustainableenergy options available in the countryside are keyelements in plans to cut carbon dioxide emissions. Weneed a progressive approach to these activities topromote sustainable solutions that are important bothto rural communities and to meet the wider challengeof tackling climate change.

While agriculture retains a national policy profile in termsof food production, its economic profile has beengradually declining, with job losses and restructuringleading land managers to find new uses for farm assets,usually in the form of office space and light industrialworkshops. Indeed, the countryside not only grows foodbut it also provides opportunities for sport and recreation.These types of activity are not necessarily ‘traditional’, butthey bring income into the countryside, as well as helpingto develop interest and understanding.

But this does not mean that land-based employment isthe only kind of economic development that should belocated in rural communities. The narrow interpretationof planning policy which prevents smaller rural villagesfrom meeting their affordable housing needs too oftenapplies equally to economic development. Often localpeople say that the interpretation and implementationof national planning policy at local level givesprecedence to development in larger ‘key’ centres andrestricts rural development elsewhere – evendevelopment which is small scale, low impact andfosters local employment opportunities.

A significant challenge to the growth of ruraleconomies is that current policy focuses on city-regionsas the engines of economic growth and regeneration.The unintended consequence may be leaving hugeareas of rural England ‘off the map’. If the newGovernment is serious about localism, it is important

24 Historic Farmsteads and Landscape Character in High Weald. Forum Heritage Services for the High Weald AONB Joint AdvisoryCommittee and English Heritage, 2008. http://www.highweald.org/home/research.html and http://www.highweald.org/look-after/property-management/historic-farmsteads.html

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Recommendation 13Government should consult on how anyredesigned business support services can bestmeet the needs of businesses located in ruralareas (whether land based or not) who may have different advice requirements and access to support from those based in urban areas.

Our commitmentThe CLA and the LG Group commit to worktogether with other relevant bodies oninformation and advice which will encourage the adoption of innovative and distinctly ruralapproaches to employment and enterprise inrural areas, using Councils’ new freedom fromcentral planning prescription and othermechanisms.

Supply of business sites and premises

We should protect and maintain a good supply ofappropriate sites and premises for all kinds ofbusinesses. Such action should include a sensitive butflexible approach to the conversion of farm buildingsand farm diversification; business expansion throughextensions to existing buildings and through moreflexible planning and a review of the tax regime inrelation to work-based home extensions and small-scalepremises; and better support for existing business toexpand within the community.

Ensuring a good supply of sites and premises is anessential element in building more sustainable ruraleconomies and better-paid employment. Growth is a

Case studyHathersage Hall Business Centre, Derbyshire

Hathersage Hall Business Centre is bringing prominent knowledge-based businesses from Sheffield and Manchester into the village of Hathersage, which lies within the Peak District National Park and is also a Conservation Area. The 18th century, Grade II listed, family owned farm complex wasdeveloped into state-of-the-art offices in 2007. The 12,500 square foot complex is the first developmentwithin the confines of the Peak District National Park to combine listed buildings and new structures to create a high-quality commercial property hub dedicated to knowledge-based businesses – including those in the legal, architectural, design, digital, finance and marketing sectors. The BusinessCentre comprises six sensitively restored Grade II listed farm buildings, complemented by two new-build properties to create 13 offices in a variety of sizes, including new-build dedicated ‘incubator’ units for fledgling companies.

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The Rural Challenge

economic sustainability by encouraging high-qualitylocal employment opportunities of an appropriate scaleand type needs to be reinforced to planners at locallevel. The narrow interpretation of ‘sustainability’ mustbecome a thing of the past as it applies to economicdevelopment and jobs in rural areas.

Recommendation 14Local government should adopt clear policies topromote, protect and maintain a good supply ofappropriate sites and premises for all kinds ofbusinesses in smaller rural communities(including sparsely populated and peripheralareas) – adopting a sensitive but flexible approachto the conversion of farm buildings and farmdiversification; and better support for existingbusiness to expand within the communitythrough extensions to existing buildings and newbuild. Where the potential local impact has beenshown to not threaten the quality of rural placesor the architectural and/or historic merits of buildings, and subject to conformitywith other local planning policies, conversion or building of small-scale business premises inrural areas should be promoted, and where there is oversupply conversion to residential use should also be sympathetically considered.

Unlocking the potential of re-using historicfarm buildings

We have stated above that where business space islimited it will be important to protect sites againstresidential redevelopment in order to preserve them aspotential workspaces. However, in many other areas thedeclining state of the building stock and its ubiquitymeans that the supply of buildings will far exceedpossible demand for business use, even with a moreresponsive planning system. There, a mixed approach isrequired which adapts buildings for both residential andbusiness development according to their character andcapacity for change. Interestingly, in this regard,English Heritage research demonstrates that in someremote rural areas (for example, the Bowland Fringeand Pendle Hills) converted farm buildings alreadyrepresent 5% of the entire dwelling stock – an importantcontribution when supply is restricted. This capacity ofexisting traditional farm and other agriculture-relatedbuildings to provide affordable housing, exemplified by

challenge for any business. But in rural areas thischallenge is amplified by a lack of suitable businesspremises, and exacerbated by the fact that employmentland reviews focusing on rural employment have notbeen undertaken or updated for a long time, so theplanning authority evidence to support ruralemployment sites simply does not exist. There arefrequently no small or ‘incubator’ business premisesavailable for start-ups to step in to. Businesses wishingto grow in their existing site, or create a new premises,may also fall foul of too narrow a view of what isappropriate business for the countryside. Businessesrooted in local communities may either have to limitgrowth or move away. Either way, the local communityloses the opportunity for local employment growth, andmay lose local employment altogether.

Redundant rural business premises of all types – includingheritage/listed buildings, or buildings in the curtilage oflisted buildings, not just unused farm buildings – shouldbe seen as an opportunity to provide modern premisessuitable for the growth of new kinds of localemployment.25 The conversion of business premises tohousing should be resisted where there is not appropriatealternative employment space available in the communityto sustain and grow local employment. Spare office spacein a market town is not in itself an indication that space isnot needed to meet local employment needs. However, aproper assessment should be made of the supply anddemand for all types of potential use for these kinds ofbuildings – see Recommendation 15 below.

Planning policy and national, regional and localpriorities need to reflect the proper balance between theneed for housing and employment space in ruralcommunities. Re-use and conversion of existingbuildings can provide new premises for ruralenterprises, creating new and often much neededemployment space, ensuring the viability of existingrural business and supporting farm diversification. Butwith appropriate scale and design, all sorts of businesspremises can be accommodated in rural communities –new as well as restored, for high-tech and office uses aswell as for food and more traditional rural enterprises.

Planning Policy Statement 4: Planning for SustainableEconomic Growth picked up many of therecommendations of the Taylor Review in this respect –but the message that even the smallest ruralcommunities can build their environmental, social and

24

25 Living Buildings in a Living Landscape: Finding a future for traditional farm buildings. English Heritage and the CountrysideAgency, 2006. www.helm.org.uk/upload/pdf/Living-Buildings-Long-Version.pdf; and Conversion of Traditional Farm Buildings: Aguide to good practice. English Heritage 2006. www.helm.org.uk/upload/pdf/Traditional-Farm1.pdf

The Rural Challenge

the South Lakeland ‘Home on the Farm’ initiative, hasrecently been recognised in the new CoalitionGovernment’s programme of commitments.

Recommendation 15Local Authorities and Local EnterprisePartnerships should consider strategic reviews of the redundant traditional farm building stockin their areas in order to develop evidence-basedplanning policies for its adaptive re-use forbusiness or housing purposes.

Home-based businesses

Home-based businesses are much more commonin rural areas than in urban areas, are already thedriving force in many rural economies, and arefast growing in number. In the most rural areas morethan one in three people now work from home. Nationally,the proportion of the workforce working mainly fromhome doubled between the last two Censuses (1991 and2001) to around one in ten.26 In all types of rural area,home-based work is significantly more common than inurban areas: 17% of working rural residents work fromhome, and in the most rural areas (sparse hamlets andisolated dwellings) this figure is 31%, compared with 8%of urban-based residents.27 These figures will havegrown significantly since the 2001 Census.

There are benefits for the home-based worker or smallbusiness in terms of lower cost of combined workspaceand home, a reduction in time lost commuting, increasedbusiness security, and improved work-life balance.Home-based work has intrinsic benefits for sustainabledevelopment too. It encourages less use of the car, andrequires less infrastructure, fewer buildings, and lessenergy use (since space and heat are shared with thehome). Small-scale local employment, even whenadjacent to the home rather than in it, encourageswalking to work. The key difference in travel-to-workpatterns is that rural residents are more likely to commuteunder 1 kilometre (35.8% rural compared with 21.5%urban working residents), while the most commoncommute distance for urban residents was 1-5 kilometres.The proportions commuting longer distances weresimilar for both rural and urban residents.28

So ensuring an appropriate supply of land andworkspace for small and home-based businesses, andthus encouraging local employment in rural villages,can increase the sustainability of rural communities.The business may stimulate the local economy by usingother local businesses – the store, the Post Office – andincrease the prosperity of a neighbourhood. Purelyresidential areas tend to be deserted during the day, asemployment areas are at night. Both are vulnerable tocrime when empty. Properties inhabited for the dualfunctions of dwelling and workplace tend to beoccupied across the 24-hour period, reducing thisvulnerability and building community cohesion.

Yet for home-based enterprise, business expansion canbe difficult owing to few expansion opportunities, andtherefore can often mean one of two options: eitheremploying someone at the kitchen table, or re-locatinginto town. Both options – to work in cramped orunsuitable space, or to commute elsewhere – can belimiting factors for growth. Survey evidence suggeststhat for many home-based businesses, a poor workingenvironment hampers business growth.29 Put simply,why take on staff if there is nowhere to put them, andthe business makes viable a comfortable lifestyle,without the need for growth?

Yet Local Planning Authorities could be more ready togrant approval to proposals for extra workspace. Thereis no obvious reason for taking a less positive approachin principle to the creation of a room for use as aworkspace than for family use. Of course environmentalimpacts like noise need to be sensibly considered andpossibly conditions imposed accordingly, but in the ITera many professional businesses generate little morenoise than the sound of a keyboard, and fewer visitorsthan a family home. The new Government shouldintroduce a much more supportive approach toworkspace extensions to the home specifically designedto encourage appropriate local business growth.

Similarly, if a home-based solution may not be viable forthe business to grow, a community-based solutionshould be available. Yet while it is easy enough to find asmall office in most urban communities, in mostvillages very few if any such premises exist, and olderredundant premises are far more likely to be turned into

26 1991 and 2001 Censuses. Office for National Statistics – cited in T. Dwelly et al.: Tomorrow’s Property Today. Flexibility, 2008, p.227 2001 Census. Office for National Statistics28 Living Working Countryside. The Taylor Review of Rural Economy and Affordable Housing. Department for Communities and Local

Government, 2008. www.communities.gov.uk/publications/planningandbuilding/livingworkingcountryside29 Shropshire Enterprise Partnership Limited submission to the Taylor Review – a survey of 400 home-based entrepreneurs found that

74% cited a ‘lack of custom built workspace in my home’ as hampering business growth

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The Rural Challenge

Our commitmentThe RTPI, the TCPA and the LG Group will worktogether to explore model Local DevelopmentOrders which could remove the need for formalchange of use, alteration or extension planningpermissions for small-scale live-work typedevelopments. These models should outlineclearly innovative rural best practice fordelivering required rural homes and workplaceswhile not undermining rural character.

High-quality broadband

We must invest in extending high-quality broadbandthroughout rural communities, which is a prerequisitefor maintaining and growing the rural economy, as wellas an increasingly essential part of the social,educational and service infrastructure.

Gradually extending accessibility to broadband opensup unprecedented opportunities which many of thoseliving in rural communities are taking advantage of.Growth in the proportion of knowledge-intensivebusiness services between 1998 and 2005 – largelyreliant on ICT infrastructure – has increased by 46% inrural areas compared with 21% in urban areas.30

Cottage industries produce and sell everything fromethical clothing to luxury food products. Businessformation is disproportionately high in rural England.There are now 556 businesses per 10,000 population inrural districts, compared with 443 in urban districts(represented by VAT registration); while in 2009 therewere 13.9 small business start-ups per 1,000 populationin all rural areas, compared with 12.7 per 1,000population in urban areas.31

However, recent research also suggests that the speedof internet connection and service is often much slowerin rural areas than in urban ones, because existingbroadband technology is less efficient in sparselypopulated areas.32 In a time of recession, improving the business environment by rolling out high-speed broadband to all rural communities would help small rural businesses to make a vital contribution to the nationaleconomy – and bring a range of public servicesinto businesses and homes at the same time.

housing than workspaces. Villages may get or haveworkshop-style sheds; they more rarely get or havehigh-quality office spaces. The assumptions that ruraldevelopment is centred on land-based industries, andoffice needs are catered for by spare capacity in thetown, encourages unsustainable commutes andconstrains sustainable rural economic growth.

Planning is not the only issue. The tax system fromcapital gains to business rates deters home-basedsolutions. There is strong evidence that this not onlyconstricts growth, but encourages an unofficial ‘black’economy for home-working. The new Governmentshould urgently review perverse disincentives in thetax system to home-based work and especiallyemployment creation. A de minimis percentage of thehome used for business before business rates andcapital gains tax liabilities occur, for example, mightencourage employment growth in rural areas at little orno cost.

Better support for home-based business, especially inmaking the first step into employing local staff andmoving when necessary to local external premises,would transform economic opportunities for local peoplein many small rural communities, providing new highlysustainable local employment.

Recommendation 16The new Government should ensure thatnational planning policy and guidance does notprevent Local Authorities from introducing amuch more supportive approach to workspacealterations or extensions to the home toencourage appropriate local business growth, bymaking appropriate changes to Part 1 of theGeneral Permitted Development Order.

Recommendation 17The Government should conduct a review of thetax regime in relation to work-based homeextensions and small-scale premises to removeperverse disincentives in the tax system to home-based work and especially employment creation.For example, to encourage employment creation ade minimis percentage of the home used forbusiness could be introduced before businessrates and capital gains tax liabilities occur.

30 Annual Business Inquiry, Workplace Analysis. Office for National Statistics (from Nomis), 200731 State of the Countryside 2010. CRC 119. Commission for Rural Communities, July 2010.

http://ruralcommunities.gov.uk/files/sotc/sotc2010.pdf32 Survey of more than 138,000 web connections across the UK by Thinkbroadband.com, June 2008

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The Rural Challenge

We have already said that home-based working is twiceas common in rural areas as in urban areas, and is asustainable use of property that can help both to growthe local economy and facilitate the low-carbon agenda.Existing housing and lack of broadband infrastructureoften mitigates against ‘live-work’ options, holding backrural start-up enterprise and investment.

The Digital Britain33 report also highlighted thatenhanced delivery of public services requires universalaccess take-up within the home. The UK has thehighest number of public services available online –some 89%, compared with around 70% in France andGermany. This will be particularly pertinent to those onlower incomes, older people, or those remote from thephysical distribution points for public service and othercurrently excluded communities and groups.

The Government has decided to abandon thebroadband levy and rely on private investment in nextgeneration broadband services. Part of the solution maybe through enabling small communities to take actionon broadband themselves. The potential for initiativesthat can be generated and implemented by thecommunity itself is already being explored nationally,and is likely to be widely supported by ruralcommunities since it targets individuals, supports localeconomic development, and offers solutions to creatinga range of ‘virtual’ public services. The newGovernment’s commitment to rural broadband may beenabled faster and more effectively through community-led next generation broadband than through gradualupgrade of existing services.

Increasing access to high-speed connectivity services(such as ‘superfast broadband’) for households,business and communities in poorly served areasacross the UK is a key policy focus for the CoalitionGovernment. This includes the continuation of aUniversal Service Commitment of 2Mbps (2 megabitsper second), first launched in the Digital Britain reportin 2009, to bring connectivity to those areas stillwithout a basic level of broadband access – primarilyrural areas. The Government is making moneyavailable from the under-spend of the TV DigitalSwitchover Help Scheme to try to address this problem,and is currently developing suitable commercial anddelivery models. The first step towards increasing thepenetration of high-speed connectivity will be therunning of three market testing projects in rural areas.The information from these projects, in addition to

initiatives that are already going on across the country,will be used to better target possible Governmentintervention and investment in ‘superfast broadband’in the future. The growth of new technology opens anunprecedented opportunity to help rural businessdeliver far more for the economy locally and nationally,rejuvenate rural communities, and so increase theirenvironmental, social and economic sustainability. Butwe need to deliver the infrastructure, premises optionsand support to unlock this potential.

Recommendation 18The Government proposals on broadband should encourage the most appropriate means by which communities can obtain high-speedbroadband access, whether through commercialsupply or community-led initiatives. In buildingcost-benefit models of projects to secure betterbroadband speeds, partners should consider thepotential savings to public service delivery costs that can result from e-delivery.

33 Digital Britain. Final Report. Department for Culture, Media and Sport, June 2009

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The Rural Challenge

Challenge 3Delivering great rural services

34 The Rural Services Manifesto 2010 and Beyond. Rural Services Network, 2010.www.rsnonline.org.uk/images/files/ruralservicesmanifesto2010.pdf

35 State of the Countryside Update: Children and educational services. CRC Web 43. Commission for Rural Communities, March 2010.http://ruralcommunities.gov.uk/files/CRC%20WEB43%20SOTC%20Update_TAGGED180310.pdf

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The Rural Challenge

� Local services generate local jobs. Local peopleemployed locally spend more in the local area,thereby supporting the local economy.

� They contribute to reducing travel and thereby tocarbon dioxide reduction targets.

Only if people in rural communities have ready accessto local schools, local jobs, local shops and pubs andhomes which are affordable will they and their childrenthrive, and will the nation meet its environmental andeconomic needs.

Yet the trend across the whole range of services, in bothrural areas and small towns serving a wider ruralhinterland, has been one of closure, affecting both publicand private services, even before the credit crunch andthe need to rein in public spending. The fastest closurerates are generally among the private sector. Ruralshops are closing at the rate of 400 to 500 per year, hitby a combination of rising costs, lack of credit, andfalling margins. Village pubs are being closed at anunprecedented rate, and Post Offices remain underextreme threat.34 For public services, the threat isservices becoming ever more remote, as smaller-scale –and per capita more expensive – delivery is cut back inthe name of rationalisation and service quality.

The drivers of rural service closures include centralisation,specialisation, cost cutting, people accessing servicesnear the workplace, and the changing population balance.

Of course service closures are not unique to ruralareas, and the need to find savings is nowuniversal. But the impact will be greater time and again in rural communities – because, quitesimply, the next nearest outlet is likely to be much further away and less accessible by publictransport in rural rather than urban areas.

The imbalance between urban and rural public serviceprovision is already marked:35

What we said in our prospectus:

‘Every healthy community needs its services: includingtransport, education, social support and financialaccess. But it’s extremely unlikely – as experienceproves – that the form of such services demanded bylarge, urban communities will be equally satisfactory forthose in the countryside. Or it may be that thoseservices designed for urban use are simply tooexpensive for smaller rural communities. As a result,and all too often, Governments simply cut them out.

‘That’s why it’s essential that in future rural services are farbetter tailored to local needs – and that is best done whenthey are determined not by remote legislators but by thecommunities they are there to serve. The result, in manycases, will be different ways of delivering rural servicesbetter suited to the needs of those communities, combinedwith a welcome decrease in cost.’

A review of rural service provision over the last twodecades makes depressing reading – especially to theapproximately 10million people (over 19% of England’spopulation) who live there. Rural areas often lack thevery basic services enjoyed by their urban counterparts,and small towns lack some of the basic infrastructure toserve the needs of their residents and those living in thesurrounding rural hinterland.

Local services are fundamentally important:

� They contribute significantly to the vitality ofplace.

� They underpin sustainable mixed communities.

� It is the most vulnerable who are hardest hit bythe withdrawal of local services.

� Local businesses need services too – so servicesare essential for the economic prosperity of ruralareas.

� There are more than 3,000 SureStart Children’sCentres in England. Of the 394 in rural areas, 314are classified as town and fringe. Only 80 are invillages and hamlets, and, on average, these eachhave to provide for 2,500 children – more thandouble the average for urban centres.

� 50% of homes in sparse areas have a SAP rating(Standard Assessment Procedure for energyefficiency) of below 30, compared with just 8% inurban areas. A SAP rating below 30 is classified asan extremely energy-inefficient home and asignificant health hazard. Yet, for example,between 2000 and 2008 only 10% of Warm FrontGrants were awarded in rural areas, increasingonly slightly to 15% in 2008/2009.

� At the end of June 2009, 40% of 16- to 24-year-oldsin rural areas were unemployed (107,000) oreconomically inactive (267,000). Of the 573Jobcentre Plus outlets in England, around 80 arein market towns with populations of more than10,000, but only 23 in more rural areas. By 2007,45% of the rural population lived more than 5miles from a Jobcentre – up from 41% in 2000.36

� In 2009/2010, 9% of the Department for Work andPensions Growth Fund to improve the availabilityof appropriate affordable credit to those who arefinancially excluded and on low incomes went tothose in relative poverty in rural areas – up from6.8% by 2008/2009 measures.37 In 2008/2009, 18%of rural households (compared with 23% of urbanhouseholds) had an income of less than 60% of themedian income after housing costs had beenaccounted for. This figure rises to 25% (one in four)of households when the most sparse rural areas ofEngland are considered.

� Almost 60% of urban areas are able to receive acable-based broadband service – in villages andhamlets this drops to 1.5%.

Inappropriate urban-biased policy

The application (by policy-makers nationally andregionally) of inappropriate policy and practice,designed for use in urban areas, has undermined the

extent to which rural services have been able to meetlocal needs:

� Simplistic national targets are easiest and lesscostly to meet when the service providers focus oncentres of population. There has been norequirement to achieve proportionate impact inrural areas. Central target-setting has tended tocreate a lack of joined-up thinking about theissues and has led to ‘service silos’.

� Funding formulae use urban measures as proxiesfor budgeting, and fail to take proper account ofthe additional costs faced by those providingessential services across rural areas.

� The body of nationally determined rules andregulations about public service delivery maydirectly obstruct innovative approaches toproviding services affordably and effectively inrural areas, or make public service managers risk-averse about experimenting.

� Policy-makers tend to consider deprivationprimarily as an urban issue and ignore the factthat there are pockets of deprivation in rural areas and small towns. These pockets ofdeprivation are often masked in statistical terms –for instance using net income in rural areasincludes wealthy commuters and means thatmany consider rural areas and rural residents tobe affluent.

� There are other issues with national data and localdata. For example, small towns tend to be hiddenin the statistics. There is currently no agreedGovernment method for statistically separatingmarket towns from other urban areas. Under the2005 ONS rural/urban definition, settlements witha population over 10,000 are classified as ‘urban’.This includes many larger market towns such asChard, Ilfracombe, Berwick-upon-Tweed and Ilkley.This means that it is less likely for trends inmarket towns to be captured, and therefore morelikely that their special needs are overlooked. Thisneeds to be addressed. There is also a need toimprove data at the local level as a basis fordetermining solutions using community-ledplanning.

36 Rural Advocate Report 2010. CRC 118. Commission for Rural Communities, March 2010.www.ruralcommunities.gov.uk/files/CRC118-rural-advocate-report.pdf

37 Households Below Average Income (HBAI). Department for Work and Pensions, 2009.http://statistics.dwp.gov.uk/asd/index.php?page=hbai

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The Rural Challenge

Recommendation 20The Government and statutory bodies shouldrecognise that the targeting of initiatives usinglarge-area statistical data fails to recognise theexistence of dispersed rural deprivation. Whenusing geographical data of any kind, Government and public sector agencies shouldensure that they have considered whether small-area data that is more reflective of the rural context exists, or can be obtained. Thisshould then form the basis for the developmentof priorities and service delivery programmes in the area.

Recommendation 21Where the Government considers extendingcompetition in core utilities, consideration should be given to what Universal ServiceObligations are needed to ensure that companies do not ‘cherry-pick’ urban areas, with resulting reduced services or increasedcosts for dispersed rural communities.

Recommendation 22We welcome the Government commitment toscaling back inspection frameworks and activity, and reviewing regulatory systems likehealth and safety, provided they ensure thatattention is given to ‘rural proofing’ proposals.The objectives should include helping publicservices and the third sector in rural areas beless unnecessarily risk-averse about innovativelow-cost approaches to service delivery.

The ‘Big Society’ – a new dynamicfor rural services

Given the importance of services, against the reality ofcurrent spending constraints and the clear evidencethat current nationally directed solutions are failingrural communities, it is time for change.

The new Coalition Government’s commitment to the‘Big Society’ in an era of relative austerity in publicfunding sets a clear rural challenge, yet provides clearrural opportunities. We need to achieve better ruralservices, at less cost. To do that we need to harness thepower and understanding of local communitiesthemselves to deliver their own tailored solutions. Ruralareas have strengths upon which to build that newdynamic for local services.

� Universal Service Obligations on core servicesincluding utilities, telecommunications and RoyalMail are vital to sparse rural communities. There isa clear need for better regulation of private sectorservices such as telecommunications and utilitiesto ensure that such companies do not simply‘cherry-pick’ urban areas.

� Public policy has been very much focused onservice quality and choice. While this is desirableand important to rural people too, it misses thebasic rural necessity of service accessibility:having no accessible service means having no choice at all.

There will always be a service hierarchy, with higher-level services. But that should not mean that ruralneeds are simply discounted. Take health, for example.Acute hospitals will be situated in more urban centresand larger market towns. But local service delivery viamulti-use medical centres (local hospitals and GPsurgeries) has a role to play in creating accessible localservices and relieving pressure (post-operative care etc.)on acute services.

The public expenditure cuts which all public servicesface for many years to come will, without a change indirection and innovation in service delivery bettersuited to the needs of rural communities, onlyexacerbate an already untenable status quo. Incontrast, a government willing to let go of national models of delivery and support innovative localcommunity solutions, integrated with publicservice provision, will find not only that betterservices which meet local needs are delivered, but that they can be provided at less cost thantrying to use urban service models in a ruralsetting.

Recommendation 19Before finalising the Comprehensive SpendingReview, the Government should review theproportionate impact in rural areas and takeproper account of the additional costs faced bythose providing essential services across ruralareas.

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The Rural Challenge

Looking at the totality of all public spending in an arearather than by service (or service provider) presents newopportunities, as does participatory budgeting, whichhas been piloted successfully by several rural Councils.Rural areas possess strong communities and have agood track record in community engagement in localissues – including ‘community-led planning’. The workof Market Town Partnerships (including their ruralhinterland) creates a good base and action plans tomeet local needs. Many local rural service providers areinnovating already, and often work in partnership toaddress issues of common concern.

All these are basic building blocks for a new dynamicfor rural services better tailored to local needs – asdetermined by the communities they are serving andnot by remote legislators – and delivering a welcomereduction in costs. Above all, this new dynamic mustrespect the fact that no two places are the same (thusrequiring different patterns of local solutions) and thatcentrally prescribed performance targets are part of theproblem, not the solution.

Where the community offers to fill the gap left by awithdrawn service with a lower level of support (a lunchclub in place of a day care centre, community transportschemes to take people to service centres), investmentmay still be needed to support the community; the ‘BigSociety’ needs practical as well as policy support tokick-start and maintain these replacement services.

The new dynamic will need to focus on turninglocalism and total place into a rural reality,through five core principles: empowerment, social enterprise, hub and spoke delivery,community investment, and unlocking thepotential of modern IT to deliver virtual servicesolutions.

Community empowerment means:

� The involvement of local people in serviceplanning and the identification of gaps inprovision and in prioritisation – community-ledplanning in its widest sense. That requires thatthe gap between the statutory and voluntarysectors be bridged in terms of their involvement inthe processes and the local determination anddelivery of local outcomes.

� Community connectors – people in a community who are in regular contact withperhaps the more vulnerable and those less likelyto gain access to particular services and who actto alert services to need. For example, postmen orshopkeepers, who are in contact with residents,can act as levers to alert providers about servicesrequired, such as healthcare/financial advice/police support etc. The Village Agents model,originally set up in Gloucestershire, wherebyclusters of communities are served by an Agentpaid to keep in touch with the community andindividual vulnerable residents, has beenacknowledged as national good practice and isnow being replicated elsewhere.38

� Service delegation/devolutions from principalCouncils to Parish/Town Councils where thismakes sense to the community, and the use ofLocal Development Plan processes to seek theretention of local service outlets.

� Encouraging community-run enterprises/services –the Government’s proposals on the ‘CommunityRight to Bid’ need to encompass both ‘like for like’services under the commissioning route and supportfor community-led initiatives that extend the reachof public services or provide partial solutions toretaining local provision.

� The Government’s proposals on the ‘CommunityRight to Buy’39 directly relate to the development of community-owned shops, pubs and otherprivate sector retail outlets. Community-ledplanning has been shown to be effective ingenerating the necessary support to save facilities, and the Plunkett Foundation40 providesthe specialist expertise to bring the project tofruition. But policy mechanisms to support theCommunity Right to Buy, potentially through theplanning system, need to allow sufficient time forcommunity enterprises to develop.

� A Government-backed Post Office Bank, providing as full a range of financial services aspossible, providing local banking services for small businesses and vulnerable people while also supporting a sustainable rural Post Officenetwork.

38 See www.grcc.org.uk/our_work/village_agents39 The ‘Community Right to Buy’ is a Big Society manifesto commitment which will allow communities to save an existing service

outlet that they consider is essential to local community life40 See www.plunkett.co.uk/

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The Rural Challenge

Community hubs and spokes means:

� Shared or multi-purpose service outlets – perhapsbased on Council one-stop shops, but with accessto services in other locations such as village hallsand shops using new technologies.

� The use of more outreach and mobile services –taking the service to (or closer to) the end user,and resourcing this by involving more than oneservice. Good examples exist of partnershipsbetween local government and police, fire andhealth services providing advice across all sectorsand identifying need where necessary.

� There are over 9,000 community-owned halls inrural communities, many of which already providea base for regular outreach and advice services.Wiring up village halls can also provide access toonline services and reduce the digital divide inrural communities. There is a similar potential rolefor many church buildings – according to EnglishHeritage, 13% of rural places of worship are atrisk.41

� Rural/market towns should be identified andsupported as service centres for their ruralhinterland.

Community investment means:

� Public service funding formulae must recognisethe rural service delivery costs associated withpopulation dispersal and settlement patterns.

� Wherever possible, Government investment shouldbe linked to building the capacity of communitiesto design and mesh together their own solutions,using local knowledge and local action to delivertailored solutions that maximise value andminimise cost.

Virtual community means:

� Using broadband/digital TV/mobile phonenetworks to access services such as tele-health, e-learning, virtual colleges, access to JobcentrePlus services etc. – but the existing ruralbroadband gap (including speed and reliability ofservice) needs to be bridged first.

Recommendation 23The Government’s proposals on the ‘Community Right to Bid’ need to encompass twoalternative approaches, so that appropriatesolutions can meet local circumstances through‘like for like’ services via commissioning, orthrough community-led initiatives that extendthe reach of public services or provide partialsolutions to retaining local provision, particularly where the service would otherwiselack viability.

Recommendation 23aThe Government’s proposals on the ‘Community Right to Buy’ should build on themechanisms already in place to supportcommunity enterprise replacement of key retailservices, ensuring that resulting policiesrecognise the time taken to develop communityenterprises.

Recommendation 24The Government should work with the PostOffice to achieve a full a range of financialservices through rural Post Office branches,providing local banking services for smallbusinesses and vulnerable people, andsupporting a sustainable rural Post Officenetwork.

Recommendation 25Public service providers should consider options for shared or multi-purpose serviceoutlets, outreach and mobile services, beforeinstituting cuts to services. These can providemore cost-effective options – including deliverythrough public and private community facilities,from village halls to Post Offices and pubs.

Recommendation 26Government proposals to work with the privatesector to develop IT infrastructure should takeaccount of the opportunities to improve accessand reduce the cost of providing public servicesin rural communities through services such astele-health, e-learning, virtual colleges, andaccess to Jobcentre Plus services etc., includingthe benefits of wiring up community facilities like village halls as a first step.

41 Caring for Places of Worship. English Heritage, 2010. www.english-heritage.org.uk/protecting/heritage-at-risk/caring-for-places-of-worship/

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The Rural Challenge

needs to be delivered in affordable and thereforeoften innovative ways.

Policy and funding need to move on from urbantransport models, and look to innovative solutions fortailoring public transport to rural needs. Where publictransport, in any form, fails to meet needs, community-based solutions should be supported to fill the gap.These can be formal community transport, such as carpools and minibus provision, or less formal schemes,such as organised good neighbour and car-sharing.

Alongside specific sectoral services, such as schoolbuses, hospital transport, and social services, there is atrack record of success in developing local community-based transport services, to meet boththe specific needs of disadvantaged groups within ruralcommunities, and the wider needs of the ruralcommunity as a whole. Many of these ‘bottom-up’schemes serve to fill the gaps left by the withdrawal ofcommercial services, increasingly drawing upon socialenterprise models of organisation and financing.

An excellent example of service innovation can be foundin Lincolnshire, which has regular traditional busesrunning on inter-urban routes (called InterConnect), thena pre-booked service (called CallConnect) filling the gapsby running from pre-set pick-up points in outlyingvillages. CallConnect will take people to other local pick-up/set-down points, or (for longer journeys) it will takethem to meet an lnterConnect service or to a local railstation. The third layer of this transport system is a Dial-a-Ride service which offers door-to-door provision for thosewith mobility problems who cannot manage CallConnect. However initiatives like this face serious challenges,including securing continuous funding, finding andretaining volunteer drivers, and restrictive legislation.

Recommendation 27Local strategic transport planning should takegreater account of access issues for dispersedrural communities, to ensure that they areeffectively linked to regional and national roadand rail networks. Subsidy for local publictransport in rural areas should be prioritisedtowards innovative programmes that supportcommunity solutions where these can offer lesscostly solutions than traditional public transportoffers better suited to urban centres.

Rural transport

Transport is a good example of an essential rural servicenot addressed by urban models of delivery. Theadequate provision of rural public transport is viewed asa core issue by rural communities and service providersalike, all the more important for its role in connectingrural people with their homes, workplaces and otherservices. The last government made significantinvestment in rural public transport – but to little effect.In a recent survey public transport was the policy areathat most rural residents felt was a priority forGovernment action, 28% of respondents placing it intheir top four areas for action.42

Rural transport raises three core challenges for publicpolicy-makers:

� The inability of public transport to adequatelyserve a wider range of destinations – combinedwith rising fares, the loss of local facilities such asPost Offices, shops and health centres, and thegrowing reliance on the private vehicle – hascaused serious problems for those without accessto private transport, especially the old, theyoung, and the housebound. These problems havebeen well documented. Given a growing butageing rural population, and the prospect ofcostlier fuel and/or carbon rationing, the transportneeds of those without access to private cars arelikely to increase rather than decline.

� The rural transport problem goes beyond thespecific needs of disadvantaged groups. Despitewidespread calls for better integration of publictransport, rural areas are generally poorly connectedto wider regional and national public transportnetworks, such as train and express bus services.This is partly because rural areas are not included instrategic planning exercises at regional or nationallevels. They are perceived to be marginal to theneeds or viability of major transport proposals.

� The challenge to reduce carbon dioxideemissions in order to help mitigate climatechange. Transport is a major producer of carbondioxide, and rural areas are perceived – rightly orwrongly – to be a leading culprit. There is nodoubt that improved public transport could help toreduce these carbon dioxide emissions, but it

42 Rural Insights Residents Survey 2009. Research Report. Commission for Rural Communities and Ipsos MORI Social ResearchInstitute, March 2010. http://ruralcommunities.gov.uk/2010/03/10/rural-insights-resident-survey-2009/

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The Rural Challenge

What we said in our prospectus:

‘The draw of the countryside as a place to live continues to have its impact. The population of ruraltowns is growing twice as fast as those in the rest ofthe country. But when rural towns expand toaccommodate these new arrivals, all too often it takesthe form of ever more housing estates – ringing thetown and remote from jobs, shops, services andleisure facilities. The inevitable result: more and morepeople getting into their cars to go to work, to shop, tohave a meal out, and less and less an integratedcommunity. Developments of this kind are oftenaesthetically unattractive and invariably harmful for the community, the environment – and therefore thenation.

‘A study of traditional communities, and how they grewover the centuries to meet the needs of theirinhabitants, shows with absolute clarity that thesuccessful ones were the comprehensive ones, theintegrated ones: neighbourhoods not estates, with allkinds of housing, local enterprises, local shops,communal open spaces, schools, public transport,doctors’ surgeries, pubs and playgrounds. Before thecar, every popular community grew this way. To tackleclimate change and to build thriving communities, somust those we plan for today.’

Many rural market towns are facing proposals forsubstantial housing growth and – usually separately –business parks and edge-of-town retail centres. All ofthe major political parties, and interest groups from theHome Builders Federation to the Campaign to ProtectRural England, agree that substantial numbers of newhomes are needed in many rural towns, and so alsowork places and services. Existing housing waitinglists, longer lives, more single people, a generation ofyoung people facing unaffordable house prices, andinternal migratory pressure – it all adds up to manymore homes and associated developments needed over time in and around the majority of market townsacross rural England.

There is a real danger that current planning practicewill deliver neither the quantity of housing we need northe places people want to live in, let alone theintegrated services that functioning neighbourhoodsrequire. And poorly planned extensions will have aproportionately greater impact on smaller market townsthan on large cities.

The new Coalition Government has begun to embark ona radical set of reforms to planning: the abolition ofRegional Spatial Strategy (RSS) targets, and theintroduction of new incentives (and penalties) for LocalAuthorities to encourage support for development; anemphasis on community involvement in core planningdecisions; and a fundamental shift away from nationalprescription.

Nationally a target of 3million new homes by 2020 wasset by the last government.43 Regardless of the merits ofthis target, now abandoned, and even with lower levelsof annual development and an end to regionallyimposed development targets, the new CoalitionGovernment remains clear that substantial newdevelopment will be needed. Within a generation newbuilding will have a dramatic impact on the size andnature of most market towns.

It is vital that the new generation of communityextensions and neighbourhoods do not repeat themistakes of recent decades of development. It is fair tosay that until now the focus of development in themajority of rural areas has been on delivering (orresisting) the numbers required by Government, ratherthan on creating attractive sustainable communities.The Local Development Framework (LDF) process hasgenerally failed to encourage local authorities to fullyembrace a longer-term, more creative, ‘place shaping’role. Consequently, rural development has continued totake a developer-led, piecemeal approach.

Driven by targets, Local Authorities generally approvedland for development incrementally, each piece of land a new pocket of housing (or business space or retail

Challenge 4Flourishing market towns

43 As set out in the Draft Legislative Programme 2008-09. See www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/cm73/7372/7372.pdf

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The Rural Challenge

park) – almost never integrated neighbourhoods andcommunities rich in diversity, opportunity, and localservices. Such housing estates rarely ‘justify’ even ashop or a pub, let alone integrating employment,services, attractive centres. Over the years the numbers of homes mount up – hundreds of housesbecome thousands; they encircle the older parts of the town, with no sense of their own place, no facilities for residents, and with ‘public’ space wastedon grass verges in front of houses, while back gardens are nothing more than postage stamps.

These places are not ‘neighbourhoods’ in their ownright; they are a sprawling series of housing estatestacked onto towns. They deliver little if any economicgain in themselves; and the wider economic value ofextensions which create linked communities, with their own sense of place, can never be realised. Manyolder communities of comparable size support thrivingshops and pubs and cafes in their centres, because theyare places in their own right, even though they mayalso be part of larger communities. This sense of placecannot be built in retrospectively; it is a desirable by-product of a type of growth we have currently movedaway from.

Building at high density, and therefore using landefficiently, can help to protect rural communities’environmental assets. And housing built at highdensities – densities typical of traditional villages andmarket towns – can be of an excellent standard, both interms of the homes themselves and their surroundings.However, if high-density housing developments arepoorly designed, they create social dislocation andenvironmental detriment.

New estates may be commonly on the edge of towns,but historically the road layouts of new developmentshave encouraged car use rather than cycling or walking.This is exacerbated if there are no nearby services oremployment to walk or cycle to. As a result newdevelopments which encourage car use and thereforegenerate congestion on main routes may causeenvironmental harm, both in terms of a loss oftranquillity and increased carbon emissions. Andwithout local and community facilities of their own,there is little to build social sustainability and cohesionor links between new and existing settlements, andthere will be little in the way of community life. Suchdevelopment not only causes harm to the new but alsoto the existing settlement.

Real neighbourhoods, genuinecommunities

How development takes place will significantly shapethe character of our towns and that of the countrysideover the next decade. There is no reason at all why newhomes need to be delivered through incrementaldevelopments of poorly designed housing estates. Wesee a different way – returning to the roots of planningas place-shaping and community-building rather thandevelopment control and meeting national or regionaltargets.

Although the annual scale of the house-buildingprogramme has become a main focus of attention, in asense the precise annual numbers are not the point.The growth of many – most – of our market towns willhappen whoever is in government locally or nationally;only the pace of development alters. The new CoalitionGovernment, committed to community involvement inplanning and building the ‘Big Society’, has theopportunity to change the way development happensmuch more fundamentally – to ensure that growth ismore environmentally-friendly in terms of both the newbuildings created and its layout, design, mix of uses andcharacter of development, thereby enhancing thesustainability of communities and meeting many of theconcerns of the existing community about newdevelopment. At the same time, such an approachshares the value of development rather than rewardingindividual speculators, resulting in the delivery ofaffordable housing, services, shops and facilities all atmuch less cost to government (local or national) than atpresent.

The first thing that is needed is a process that takes the development required over the next decade or so,and plans it as stage-by-stage extensions to thecommunity. The plan-led approach should be appliedfrom the very beginning: This crucially involves threekey elements:

� Masterplanning, to map a strategic vision andplan for development.

� Community participation, such as ‘Enquiry byDesign’, to help understand what new and existingcommunities want from new development.

� A strong partnership, including the Local PlanningAuthority, to shape the plan, and long-terminvestors to work with the community to assemblethe site and deliver the plan.

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The Rural Challenge

By putting together the value unlocked by thousands ofnew homes, and planning a community with a sense ofplace, it is possible to deliver the infrastructure, theshops, the pubs and cafes, the schools, health centresand leisure facilities, the multi-functional green spaces,the business premises and the mixed housing thatmake a place a community, and to do so at less publiccost.

Masterplanning communities

A great masterplan delivers more than just a strategyfor extracting the greatest market value from an area.Instead, it examines planning from the ‘bigger picture’perspective of building a meaningfully sustainablecommunity featuring housing (market and affordableintermingled), community facilities (health centres,libraries, community centres, and sports facilities),transport links (footpaths, cycle paths and bridle waysas well as roads), and private gardens and communitygreen spaces (eco-gardens, playing fields and parks), aswell as spaces for local businesses (shops, Post Offices,and office and retail spaces). It also plans all this in the context of the existing town centre and the surrounding villages. Inherited character is a key aspect of urban and rural masterplanning to produceplaces with character and distinctiveness.44 Ultimatelyit is about making sure that development creates places that are attractive, vibrant, working communities for the people who live there, which link toand enhance surrounding existing communities.Masterplanning can also assist in site assembly andprovides detailed guidance for subsequent planningapplications.

Local Authorities still have many of the powers neededto deliver this kind of vision, but whereas they alreadyunderpin much of the urban renaissance and urbanrenewal programmes, they could be used much more inrural communities. In the last government’s Eco-TownsPPS,45 conditions are listed which usefully describe thecharacter of a properly shaped place. This PPS shouldbe transformed into a code for development ofsustainable communities, applicable to all types ofgrowth, not a handful of stand-alone new eco-towns.

Recommendation 28The Eco-Towns PPS should be evolved intoinformation and advice on the development ofsustainable communities and neighbourhoods,applicable to all types of growth, not just ahandful of stand-alone new eco-towns.

Our commitmentFollowing the abolition of national densitytargets and Regional Spatial Strategies, theTCPA, the RTPI, CABE and CPRE will worktogether with other relevant bodies oninformation and advice which will help localpoliticians and planners understand the potential to develop market towns in ways which produce attractive and sustainablesettlements.

Empowering community place-shaping

The second key element is to use the tools ofmasterplanning, community engagement, and therange of planning powers to involve the community andbe genuinely visionary and ambitious about what canbe achieved; and then – most importantly – to deliver it.This is not just about allocating land for developmenton a particular side, or sides, of town.

Nor is this about an old-fashioned planning elite‘delivering for the masses’. The best results will beachieved in community halls where the public andplanners work together to discuss options andopportunities with maps and models. Today this is notwhat generally happens. In fact, it almost neverhappens. But in a few cases it has.

Such ‘Enquiry by Design’ and ‘Planning for Real’processes were strongly advocated in Towards anUrban Renaissance, published in 1999 by the UrbanTask Force.46 The report examined the ability to build4million new homes by 2025 without encroaching onthe Green Belt. The report’s key recommendationsincluded emphasis on the need to reform the planningprocess so that it could be genuinely described ascommunity led through local decision-making, better-

44 See, for example, the joint HCA and EH publication Capitalising on the Inherited Landscape: An introduction to historiccharacterisation for master planning. 2009.www.homesandcommunities.co.uk/public/documents/HCA_Historical_Characterisation_Accessible_version.pdf

45 Planning Policy Statement: Eco-towns – A Supplement to Planning Policy Statement 1. Department for Communities and LocalGovernment, 2009. www.communities.gov.uk/planningandbuilding/planning/planningpolicyguidance/planningpolicystatements/planningpolicystatements/ppsecotowns/

46 Towards an Urban Renaissance. Report of the Urban Task Force chaired by Lord Rogers of Riverside. E & FN Spon, for Departmentof the Environment, Transport and the Regions, 1999

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Communities Agency was founded. The house-buildermodel of ‘borrow quick, build quick, sell quick’ will notdeliver this, especially post-credit-crunch, althoughsuch house-builders may contribute to building it.

The nature of the development process proposed in thischapter unlocks value over time, and will take placeover many years. Local Planning Authorities must beprepared and empowered to work in partnership withthe private sector as well as with the HCA to assemblethe land necessary. Urban regeneration specialists areused to this kind of work, where the overall rise in landvalues through the development is shared betweenlandowners irrespective of whether their acre is for asupermarket, or housing, or an area of wetland habitatto deal with flood risk and water run-off. To achieve thisthe Local Planning Authority must be willing to workwith a long-term lead developer/investor. If necessary,this includes a willingness to unlock parts of the landthrough Compulsory Purchase Orders.

In an era where Government funding is short, therealisation of the shared value across a strong vibrantnew community allows better infrastructure andservices to be funded at much less cost to the taxpayer.

Recommendation 30The Government and the HCA should, as part ofthe development of the new national planningpolicy framework and the review of planningpowers, ensure that the tools and best practiceknow-how are available to Local Authorities/private sector partnerships to deliver ‘wholecommunity’ developments; to deliver strongvibrant new communities and betterinfrastructure and services; and to deliver atmuch less cost to the taxpayer, including the use of site assembly through compulsorypurchase when necessary.

Creating greener communities

There is no case for encouraging general sprawl into thecountryside, or for building on endless fields needlessly.But the efficient use of land should not mean theconstruction of unimaginative and bland predominantlyresidential quarters. Traditional villages or markettowns with terraces, alley ways, shops, and familyhouses with good-sized gardens are commonly built atefficient densities, with an easy walk to a local shop orpub and well used areas of green space.

quality design, and a more integrated approach tocommunity transport links to encourage people to beless reliant on their cars.

Developments at Poundbury in Dorchester and Upton inNorthamptonshire are both examples of attractiveplaces developed on the edge of town with their ownidentity. The central ‘hub’ of the community remainsthe existing town centre, but the new ‘spokes’ formsmall centres in their own right. Creating and deliveringattractive, vibrant sustainable new neighbourhoods andcommunity extensions with their own mix of housing,services, employment space, green space andcommunity facilities should be the aim of everysettlement with substantial allocated housing growthover time. In every successful example, the communityhas been drawn into the planning process andempowered to genuinely shape it. This process hasbeen core to both its success and its acceptability.

Recommendation 29Local Authorities should adopt policies to ensure that the creation of new neighbourhoodsand communities always involves the community in shaping sustainable proposalsthrough effective participation such as ‘Enquiryby Design’ and ‘Planning for Real’.

A strong long-term partnership

There is plenty of experience of delivering newcommunities, but it has often been in urban areas or asstand-alone new towns. However, the skills of landassembly, phased development, public-privatepartnership and so on are transferable. A key advantagefor the partners in such masterplanned long-termdevelopment is that the shared value of thedevelopment more easily funds necessary infrastructureand services – and cuts costs by delivering long-termuplift in value for an investor, rather than the short-termgains needed by traditional development models.

The lead development partners will need to be investors,with capital and a long-term commitment to thecommunity they are building, who can ride outrecessions and participate with the community. Thedevelopment as a whole will need long-term involvementin the way that mixed-use urban regenerationcompanies and some larger Housing Associationsspecialise in, and which a number of pension funds andother long-term investors are now contemplating. It isalso the principle on which the Homes and

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space for children to play safely (compared with thepostage stamp gardens often delivered with even‘executive homes’), for opportunities for wastecomposting and water recycling, and for simple privacyand quality of life. The inability to host a tree of any sizein a small modern garden results in an unbroken vistaof brick and tile from every vantage point.

While cities often contain very large parks, many ruraltowns are short of really big publicly accessible openspace, despite being surrounded by green fields whichwill never be developed, and with only limited publicaccess. The landscape and tranquillity of suchcountryside is of immense national environmental,cultural, social and economic value. To maximisecommunity gain from this, however, as much opencountryside as possible must be accessible to thepublic. As green space in urban areas is provided by themaintenance of parkland, so in rural areas access togreen space must be improved by encouraging accessinto the countryside. In addition, as communities grow,public green realm should always be incorporatedwithin or on the edge of communities to enhancebiodiversity and sustainability (in every sense), and tobring genuine community gain. Traditional Englishtowns and cities often incorporated a great deal ofgreen space within them as they grew, with enormoussocial, environmental and economic benefit.

Recommendation 31Local Authorities should prioritise access togreen space in new community developments,adopting the Natural England recommendationthat people living in towns and cities shouldhave ‘an accessible natural green space, of atleast 2hectares in size, no more than 300metres (5 minutes’ walk) from home’.

Recommendation 32The HCA should work with Local Authorities and other bodies to provide sustainable fundingmodels for the long-term management of greeninfrastructure in new communities andneighbourhoods, built on ground rent and long-term income streams from public investment.

To achieve the same in new developments means morethan just providing dull, tightly mown grassed areas witha scattering of easy-maintenance ‘lollipop’ trees. It meanscreating a green infrastructure varied in type and scale,taking greenery and the natural environment into theheart of every neighbourhood with a mix of formal anddecidedly informal spaces and places. Natural Englandrecommends that people living in towns and cities shouldhave ‘an accessible natural green space, of at least2hectares in size, no more than 300metres (5 minutes’walk) from home’.47 This will not be achieved by buildingpoorly designed and realised housing estates. More oftenthan not an individual green space can perform morethan one function at a time – biodiversity, recreation,visual delight, cooling the ‘urban heat island’, andsustainable urban drainage.

In light of the summer floods of 2007, the location ofnew housing on or near floodplains and the quality ofurban drainage have been brought into sharpperspective. The typical small gardens and paucity oflandscaped space found on poorly designed housingestates means that rainwater runs off the large amountsof hard-standing provided for cars and into the drainagesystem, increasing urban waste water problems,causing stress to natural drainage channels andriverbanks, increasing sewerage costs, and adding toflood risk as watercourses become overloaded. Welldesigned green infrastructure could do much to helptackle these problems as well as deliver biodiversitybenefits.48

The provision of a green infrastructure must be put on apar with the provision of the ‘grey’ infrastructure oftransport, energy supply, etc. That means that it mustbe cared for as actively as we care for our homes andstreets. We need to establish strong and sustainablefunding models built on ground rent and long-termincome streams from public investment for the long-term management of green infrastructure. Capitalexpenditure on creating new green spaces is a waste ofmoney if those spaces are not maintained and managedto realise their full sustainable potential. It will also beessential that green space is guaranteed for thecommunity against future development.

Private green space has huge value too: for recreation,flood prevention, natural urban waste water drainage,and biodiversity and habitat. There is a need for real

47 Natural England’s Standards for Accessible Natural Greenspace (ANGSt).www.naturalengland.org.uk/ourwork/enjoying/places/greenspace/greenspacestandards.aspx

48 See www.naturalengland.org.uk

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What we said in our prospectus:

‘For any or all of these aims to be achieved, there is oneunderlying and necessary first step. Local people inrural communities must be re-introduced to real localdemocracy. They have a far greater understanding oftheir community’s needs – and given the opportunity to shape and take the decisions, supported andfacilitated by councils with the powers and capability tohelp them do it, will be far more sensitive to the valueand potential impact of proposed change, and morewilling to contribute their own efforts to making ithappen.’

The ‘Big Society’ in rural areas

Government is set to provide new opportunities throughwhich local communities can take action to build moresustainable communities, preserve local services andgenerate higher levels of self-reliance. The ‘Big Society’ agenda aims to empower andincentivise communities within the planning system to become more involved in decisions about supporting appropriate development. Community-ledservice provision will be encouraged through the ‘Community Right to Bid’ to take on public services,and the ‘Community Right to Buy’ provides amechanism to retain valued facilities that mayotherwise be lost. Where the community supports it,Local Housing Trusts can be created to deliver newmixed developments, according to the needs identifiedwithin the community.

These commitments will produce a shift in therelationships between local government andcommunities. Previously, local government wasexpected to lead on engaging communities to shapeservices and statutory plans. Under the ‘Big Society’proposals, local communities can initiate the debateamong local residents and then negotiate with localgovernment on how their collective aspiration can bemet, building on existing good practice approachessuch as Parish Plans.

Why empowerment is a vital part ofthe rural policy argument

Unlike many urban neighbourhoods, whereempowerment has been dominated by improvinginfluence on statutory partners, rural communitiesalready take on far more responsibility themselves. Mostcommunity facilities and open space are already ownedby the community. Self-governance, in the form of Townand Parish Councils, means that there is strongcommunity identity and representation on communityissues. The finance available through their precept onthe Council Tax means that everyday maintenance oflocal facilities is often supported solely by thecommunity itself, although in practice the strength ofthis activity varies enormously between different ParishCouncils.

The traditionally high level of volunteering in ruralcommunities and the resulting scale of community-ledinitiatives is also part of this ‘empower yourself’ culture.The current concerns of many to stimulate communityaction as a solution to overcoming public financeconstraints should be addressed by learning frompractice that has been developed and refined in somerural communities over many years.

There are two sets of reasons why the Rural Coalitionbelieves that the approach it advocates to the economy,housing, planning, climate change and other issues willonly be effective if communities in rural areas are giventhe strongest possible ability to decide for themselveswhat happens at local government, parish, andcommunity level.

First, it is very widely acknowledged that the UK, andespecially England, has had one of the mostcentralised systems of governance in the developedworld. The new Coalition Government is committed todecentralisation and local decision-making, and weapplaud this. In the past, assumptions about theefficiency and effectiveness of public service deliveryhave not helped rural communities to work withproviders to find innovative approaches that meet theirneeds. The planning system has traditionally been

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Challenge 5Empowering communities

The Rural Challenge

dominated by restrictions on rural development, whichhas contributed to the loss of sustainability and vibrancy.While national planning policy has, in recent years,adopted a more flexible approach, many Local PlanningAuthorities still fail to recognise how this could benefittheir local rural communities.

Secondly, people in rural areas experience a further setof challenges in getting their needs and points of viewreflected in public decision-making. Even in LocalAuthorities with extensive rural territory, decisions mayoften be made in a large town without completeunderstanding of the differences between communitiesof different scale and location. The types of people andcommunities who would be at risk of exclusionanywhere – minorities, vulnerable young people,residents of social housing estates – are likely toexperience a further layer of obstacle in rural areas toget their voice heard and their needs met.

Community-led planning –empowerment in action

The new Coalition Government has set out proposals forempowering communities under the planning systemwhich will offer rural communities the opportunity todiscuss, agree and deliver a transformational vision fortheir local area. In the ‘Big Society’ proposals, localdebate and decision-making is referred to as‘collaborative democracy’.

The Rural Coalition believes that implementation has,as a priority, to consider how communities take on thistask, and arrive at collective decisions. This can thenform the basic building block, not just of decisions onplanning, but on the ‘Community Right to Bid’, the‘Community Right to Buy’, and all other aspects ofshaping local service delivery. Fortunately, the buildingblock already exists in the widespread use ofcommunity-led planning in rural communities acrossthe country.

Community-led planning is a structured process,organised by the community, that takes place over anextended period (see the diagram on the next page).Local community groups, parish councillors, activistsand volunteers work together through the process,helped by external facilitation, to create a vision for thecommunity and an action plan to achieve it. Theprocess uses a mix of evidence collection, differenttypes of consultation, and debate at the very localcommunity level. Every citizen should have the

opportunity to participate, and the resulting visionshould focus on the social, economic, environmentaland cultural well-being of the community and all thosewho live and work there.

Effective tools and techniques for community-ledplanning have been tried and tested in rural areas overthe last decade. The two most frequently used are TownAction Planning (formerly the Market TownHealthcheck) and Parish and Community Planning. Thetwo approaches differ only in the sense that the firstuses community consultation to develop a clearstrategic plan for a Market Town Partnership, while thesecond meets the specific needs of smaller ruralcommunities by having a stronger focus on generatingcommunity capacity and commitment with which todeliver the resulting action plan.

The community’s action plan

Actions resulting from a community-led plan can varyfrom small scale (provision of more dog litter bins) tothose of more significance in creating sustainablefacilities and services such as a community-owned shop,refurbishment or extensions to community halls, or newcommunity-owned transport provision. Increasingly,plans have tackled the impact of climate change,producing community-based emergency plans, energy-saving and recycling initiatives. Local authorities havebeen particularly appreciative of community inputs toemergency plans since the dispersion of ruralcommunities across wide areas presents a significantchallenge to designing an emergency response strategy.

New opportunities now exist to expand assetownership for many different purposes to meet currentand future needs. Community-based food initiativescan help to bolster local food agendas and tourism,renewable energy production is widely seen as a wayof securing revenue and resources, and community-owned land dedicated to increasing biodiversity andrecreational opportunities can lead to increased localhealth and well-being. Parish Councils are the normalprovider of allotment land locally, and communitycomposting schemes and community orchards offernew income-generating opportunities to delivercommunity benefit.

Of particular relevance to the ‘Big Society’ are actionsthat involve taking over local facilities and services,such as commercial retail outlets or negotiating withpublic service providers to deliver or supplement

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1 Com

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42

services in health, social care, employment, andeducation. Whereas many of these already come forwardin action plans, the community’s ‘Right to Buy’ and the‘Right to Bid’ will create a more supportive context forsuch initiatives to happen. Research49 shows that:

� By the end of 2008, over 3,000 communities hadproduced a community-led plan,50 covering anestimated population of 6.5 million people in 66 principal authority areas. Many of these plansnow need refreshing to adapt to newcircumstances, particularly where retail and publicservices are now at risk as a result of the recessionand public service constraints.

� Detailed research in the East of England found thatsince 2002, 231 communities have created plans,with over 9,000 individual actions to improve theirlocality. The community themselves were able totake on 47% of these actions without externalsupport. Of the remainder, 34% required negotiationwith public service providers to bring them about.51

The outcomes of the community-ledplanning process

The benefits of community-led planning have been wellresearched:

� High rates of participation (70% or more householdinvolvement is often achieved) and greaterunderstanding about civic structures.

� Higher turn-out at elections and more candidatesstanding for Parish Council elections.

� Harnessing the energy and commitment ofvolunteers to make things happen at a very locallevel, saving money and resources.

� Bringing forward new local projects that alreadyhave proven community support.

� Success in attracting external funding for high-priority local projects.

� Increased influence over statutory policies andservice design.

� An evidence base to support statutory policydevelopment in Sustainable CommunityStrategies, Local Area Agreements and LocalDevelopment Frameworks.

Connecting into public sectorstrategies and plans

The community-led planning toolkit developed byACRE’s Rural Community Action Network stresses theneed for involvement by Local Authority members andofficers at crucial times in the process, so that arealistic and achievable action plan is developed.

Very many rural Local Authorities have already boughtinto the value of community-led planning, severalagreeing protocols on how they get involved during theprocess and how they respond to priority actions thatresult.

While such community-led planning techniques havebeen valuable in helping to shape public servicedelivery, Local Authorities need to be much moreengaged in the production of such plans to benefit fromtheir potential. Unfortunately, many Local Authoritieshave, in recent years, begun to focus theirempowerment initiatives on more top-downengagement with communities, in line with more urbanmodels, which can be ineffective and expensive todeliver in rural areas. Furthermore, such approaches arenot always compatible with what the communitywishes to discuss, and how it wishes that discussion totake place.

Those connected with supporting and undertakingcommunity-led plans want to capitalise on the value ofpast investment and build on the culture that has beendeveloped in rural communities over many decades. Werisk losing this if the process is insufficiently recognisedas ‘best practice’ in generating empowerment in ruralareas.

Recommendation 33The Government should recognise and adoptcommunity-led planning as ‘best practice’, andshould identify quality standards for delivering it, as part of putting in place the mechanisms tounderpin the ‘Big Society’.

49 ACRE Policy Position Papers. See www.acre.org.uk50 Excludes previous approaches to community-led planning such as Village Appraisals and Village Design Statements51 See www.acre.org.uk/communityengagement_parishplans.html

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Some actions will involve close co-operation from widerstatutory agencies and partners. For example, as astructured process across a market town, community-ledplanning can provide a first stage in planning, inconjunction with the Local Authority, the long-termphysical development of a community, as well as linkingthis to ‘softer’ issues such as service provision. Wheremajor development opportunities are identified, theaction planning stage would be extended to includedetailed masterplanning – to map a strategic vision andplan for development. This would be followed bytechniques such as ‘Enquiry by Design’ and ‘Planning forReal’ to facilitate community involvement in preparingsite-specific development briefs.

Where the community is eager to ensure that vulnerableresidents – for instance the old, the young and thosewithout full mobility – continue to benefit from a servicethat is under threat from funding constraints, the RuralCoalition believes that this should initiate a debate withlocal public service providers. If the ‘Community Rightto Bid’ to take on services only covers ‘like for like’provision, then it will probably result in mechanismsunder formal commissioning processes. However, inrural areas, it is more usual for supplementary orcomplementary services to be offered by thecommunity, such as provision of community-basedtransport to take residents to services or integratingservices within community-owned facilities. If publicservice providers wish to benefit from the ability of ruralcommunities to harness local volunteers to support thetarget users, and make a contribution towards efficiencysavings, then such debate should be both constructiveand enabling. It may be necessary to free up smallamounts of grant funding from the savings made to thepublic purse, to kick-start the replacement community-led service. The Rural Coalition believes that the ‘Rightto Bid’ needs to encompass both types of communityservice provision.

Recommendation 34If the ‘Right to Bid’ leads communities to offerlower-cost voluntary solutions to retaining publicservices they do not wish to lose and which areunder threat for financial reasons, LocalAuthorities and public agencies should look atdiverting some of the savings made bywithdrawing their services into supporting suchsmall-scale, lower-cost, community-led solutions.

The community-led planning process often becomes thetrigger for community-led affordable housing

Case studyFramework for community planningin the South West

In November 2009, principal Local Authoritiesacross the South West, working with the SouthWest ACRE Network, signed up to a commonFramework to support community-ledplanning. Members of South West Councilsagreed the following.

‘This Framework starts from the premise thatevery local community in the South West Region of England, working in association with localpartners, should have the opportunity to prepare a community-based plan setting out its vision forits area and the necessary action needed toachieve it.

‘So long as these plans meet certain qualitycriteria, this Framework endorses that they shouldbe used to engage and direct:

� Regional spatial and service deliverystrategies and policies.

� Community Strategies for county, unitary andappropriate districts/boroughs.

� Policy decisions and the planning anddelivery of services.

� The allocation of resources.� The statutory land use planning system.’

In agreeing this Framework, the parties involved will only endorse plans that havedemonstrated the criteria of quality that areencompassed in ACRE’s national guidance oncommunity-led planning, and where duecognisance has been taken of District, Unitary,County and Regional priorities.

Taking forward community actionplans

The process of community-led planning generates aseries of interest groups prepared to lend their efforts to pursuing specific projects within the action plan – forexample, the steering group for the community shop, or the environmental group looking after a wildlife area, or the parents group running the newyouth club.

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development.52 By exploring local needs within theprocess, local people come to understand the housing needs of others who live and work in theircommunity, and work together to seek potentialsolutions. This will then form a basis for determiningthe support of Town/Parish Councils and principal Local Authorities for proposals, subject to more detailedwork in relation to the need, scale, viability and design.This will be reinforced if it gives communities a clearright to initiate community-led affordable housingschemes.

The Conservative Party’s manifesto proposals onincentivising local communities to accept development53 include passing some of the financialbenefit received by Local Authorities from centralgovernment directly to communities to support localcommunity infrastructure and services. LocalAuthorities will need appropriate policies in place forthis to happen. More of the action plans resulting fromthe community’s vision may become a reality if there isa suitable source of capital and revenue finance thatcould counteract the inevitable reduction in ongoingpublic funding.

A whole community approach

Central government needs to resist the temptation toprescribe the how and when of empowerment under the‘Big Society’, allowing communities to find, forthemselves, how best to capitalise on local capacity andskills. Previous urban-dominated approaches toempowerment have, for instance, restricted eligibility in investment programmes to ‘voluntary sector’organisations, ignoring the role that Parish Councilsmay play in providing community services and facilities and impacting on the relevance of suchprogrammes to rural communities. In one community,the key local player may be a Parish Council; elsewhereit might be a tenants association or the village hallcommittee. What is important is that all take jointownership of the community’s shared aspirations, asdefined within a community-led plan, and that the mostappropriate body within the community is tasked todeliver each action.

The role of Parish and TownCouncils

There are over 9,000 Parish, Town, Neighbourhood andCommunity Councils (often known as ‘local councils’)with over 80,000 elected representatives serving onthem.54 While they exist throughout the country,including large metropolitan areas, they are much moredistinctively and consistently characteristic of smallertowns and rural areas. They both manage services andprojects locally and influence other tiers of localgovernment, for example commenting on planningapplications.

Community-led planning has an added advantage inreconnecting representative democracy with localparticipation, through involving the elected members ofParish and Town Councils and local government. Theaction plan developed provides the evidence needed tostrengthen local advocacy by representatives and, withit, secure better local outcomes.

A rich landscape of community organisations andactivity underpins the vibrancy of rural areas, providingservices, managing facilities like village halls, andproviding contact and an opportunity for local people towork together to influence decisions at different levelsof government. The community sector comprises, in themain, all-volunteer groups, many managing significantlocal assets and, increasingly, social enterprises likeCommunity Land Trusts or those now running villageshops and pubs. The relentless market failure in manypublic and commercial services, which is likely toincrease rapidly over the coming years, creates bothopportunities and responsibilities for such groups toharness their energies to benefit local residents.However, the lack of paid staff to take on the challengeof leading such projects in rural areas requiresappropriate expertise and support to be available, and acontext set, via local statutory plans, that enablesprojects to be managed and implemented withoutdraining local enthusiasm or energies.

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52 See Community Led Planning. Policy Position Paper. ACRE, 2009.www.acre.org.uk/DOCUMENTS/publications/Policypositionpapers/CommunityLedPlanning.pdf

53 Open Source Planning. Policy Green Paper No. 14. Conservative Party, February 2010.www.conservatives.com/~/media/Files/Green%20Papers/planning-green-paper.ashx?dl=

54 Getting Your Message Across. A communications toolkit for local councils. National Association of Local Councils. May 2010.www.nalc.gov.uk/Document/Download.aspx?uid=16adc0da-aa36-4fc9-b1e4-6bc0e04cf0d0. See also www.nalc.gov.uk

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Asset Transfer Unit, 57 accompanied by governmentinvestment in transfer activity.

Rural communities in England already exhibit highlevels of community ownership of local assets. Forinstance, Parish and Town Councils own or control mostof their local open space, recreational facilities, carparks and allotments.

In addition, there are over 9,000 community-ownedhalls in England’s rural communities, with a total assetvalue of £3.1 billion. According to ACRE research,58

58% provide the only multi-purpose meeting place inthe community. Most act as a hub for democraticparticipation as well as the delivery of services. Theaverage annual expenditure to maintain these halls isjust under £9,000 per annum, supplemented by anaverage of 18.5 hours a week of volunteering effort.Only 3% of these halls receive any regular LocalAuthority funding.

Use of rural community halls has trebled in the last 20years. This model of asset ownership is sustainablelargely because of the self-help and volunteer effort thatgoes into their maintenance and a clear focus on itsmain purpose – providing community space for localactivity. This makes it an even more cost-effectivemodel in the current climate than one that requirescontinued revenue investment from public finance.

Rural communities have the potential to extend assetownership to meet new needs and new challenges, butthis must be done in a way that recognises some of theconstraints:

� A small rural community may not be able tosupport more than one viable facility aiming toprovide a particular service within the community.

� The community must back the most appropriateasset/location to meet specific community needsand on which to focus its energies and itsavailable finance.

� Integration of services within existing facilitiesmay be more cost-effective than acquiring newassets.

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55 A Charter for Rural Communities. Final Report. Carnegie Commission for Rural Community Development, June 2007.http://rural.carnegieuktrust.org.uk/files/rural/A%20Charter%20for%20Rural%20Communities.pdf

56 Making Assets Work: The Quirk Review. Department for Communities and Local Government, May 2007.www.communities.gov.uk/communities/thirdsector/communityassettransfer/

57 See http://atu.org.uk/58 See www.acre.org.uk/communityassets_villagehallresearch.html

Recommendation 35Parish and Town Councils should become the‘guardian’ of the community-led plan, monitoring progress and regularly refreshingpriorities in the light of changing circumstances, as part of their Power ofCompetence. Many of the actions may affectproperty owned by them, or services delivered by them. Many will involve the financial supportthat parishes can offer to local groups who alsoown property and provide services.

This stance is supported by the work of the CarnegieCommission for Rural Community Development thatcomprised internationally recognised rural experts froma wide range of backgrounds and disciplines andcovered five jurisdictions in the UK and Ireland. In itsFinal Report, A Charter for Rural Communities,55

published in June 2007, the Commission suggested thatthe dynamic, vibrant, engaged, sustainable ruralcommunity of the future would display a number ofinterrelated characteristics and that empowering localgovernance would be a key requisite. We endorse two ofits key recommendations.

Recommendation 36Parish and community level councils should beencouraged to prepare and publish a community action plan every four years. Higher-tier authorities should consider theseplans within their own strategic planningprocesses.

Enhancing community assetsthrough community ownership

National empowerment initiatives in recent years havehad a focus on communities acquiring ownership ofland and facilities, because local control leads to betterand more responsive services. A wide review ofcommunity asset ownership and management,completed by Barry Quirk for the Department forCommunities and Local Government in 2007,56 providednational momentum and resulted in the set up of the

The Rural Challenge

themselves. Over the years, support mechanisms forrural community action have been well developed tomeet the needs of rural communities. Given the newdynamics created within ‘Big Society’ proposals, it is allthe more important that communities are able to accessrelevant and independent support:

� At the beginning of 2009/10, Local Authoritieswere providing 54% of the £1.8 million per annumrequired to support investment in the localcommunity-led plan facilitation service, which isdelivered mainly by Rural Community ActionNetwork members across England’s rural areas. Ofother funding secured, 15% came via nationalDepartment for Environment, Food and RuralAffairs (Defra) investment and 10% was earnedincome.

� The Rural Community Action Network61 provides acountry-wide network of facilitators and advisersat local level, acting as a catalyst to support ruralcommunities to plan their own future and deliverand sustain community-based initiatives. Memberorganisations, based at County level, specialise inadvice on rural priorities such as management offacilities, community transport, affordable housing,and community enterprise. They also act as anadvocate to achieve equity for rural communities,brokering solutions with Local Authorities andother service providers.

� County Association of Local Councils (CALCs) areaffiliated to the National Association of LocalCouncils (NALC).62 They provide extensive trainingand capacity-building to support communitygovernance through Parish and Town Councils.

� Action for Market Towns (AMT) has founded aMarket Towns Academy63 that helps town andcommunity partnerships to assess their ownorganisational development and training needs,and provides tailored training courses onleadership, fund-raising, financial management,and other core skills. The success of the Academyis all about greater recognition being given to thevalue of local leadership.

� If there are insufficient volunteers to manage andmaintain existing community facilities,59 taking onnew initiatives that require volunteer effort to besustainable may carry very strong risks,particularly where loan finance is used to financepurchase.

A rurally sensitive solution is therefore to ask what kindof asset should be acquired for what kind of purpose,before it can be seen as an empowering solution. Intrue rural form, integrated solutions emerge throughconsidering the community as a whole, rather thanpreparing individual business plans for a particularasset. For instance, village halls have expanded theirremit to incorporate community-owned shops and PostOffices, pubs have developed local lunch clubs for theelderly, and church halls have incorporated pre-schoolsand youth clubs.

Should the response be a community buy-out of acommercial outlet such as a shop, pub or garage, thenthe community will now be considerably helped byproposals under the ‘Big Society’ on the ‘CommunityRight to Buy’.

Strengthening local leadership andcapacity

The lessons learnt from a decade of community-ledregeneration across rural areas demonstrate that to besuccessful key decisions and delivery need to bedevolved beyond the principal Local Authorities to thecommunity level and be backed by suitable support forcommunity capacity-building. As the Carnegie UK Truststates in A Manifesto for Rural Communities,60

published in October 2009: ‘Although the rhetoric ofgovernments is encouraging a ‘new localism’ andgreater community engagement, without sustainedinvestment in growing the capacity of all those whoneed to be involved in the process, these aspirationswill not be fulfilled.’

Success crucially depends on building increasingcapacity and effectiveness at the community leadershiplevel – in short, helping communities to help

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59 ACRE’s rural community buildings survey found that retention and recruitment of volunteers to sustain community halls wasidentified as one of the major challenges

60 A Manifesto for Rural Communities: Inspiring Community Innovation. Carnegie UK Trust, October 2009.www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk/files/main/A%20Manifesto%20for%20Rural%20Communities.pdf

61 See www.acre.org.uk/aboutthenetwork_index.html62 See www.nalc.gov.uk/63 See http://towns.org.uk/market-towns-academy/

The Rural Challenge

Recommendation 37To deliver the ‘Big Society’, localism andempowered communities, the Government needs to start by building local delivery capacity. Support organisations (such as ACRE,Planning Aid, etc.) should, as part of theComprehensive Spending Review, gain longer-term stability in their Government funding tohelp facilitate community planning andcommunity capacity-building. Individuals should also be encouraged to offer pro bonosupport – for example planning aid as part ofContinuing Professional Development.

An enabling public sector

If the ‘Big Society’ is to be successful in generating newcommunity initiatives, local government will need toprovide an enabling context. Lessons can be learnedfrom existing good practice in empowerment. At thesame time, new ways can be found to make existingsupport mechanisms more effective – for examplethrough better co-ordination of existing bodies.

The Beacon Scheme, set up by the Department forCommunities and Local Government and managed bythe IDeA (the Improvement and Development Agency),has highlighted valuable aspects of good practice inempowerment as part of its wider role to share bestpractice in service delivery across local government.Indeed, over the years a number of Beacon themes havebeen focused on wider empowerment and community-led planning in particular. These have included:

� Round 6: Getting Closer to Communities,which among its conclusions stated that ‘a dynamicrelationship between authorities and communitiesrequires that, on the one hand, authorities deliverservices in an effective and integrated way at a locallevel, and on the other, that they support thedevelopment of the communities’ own role’.

� Round 7: Improving Rural Services,Empowering Communities, which concludedthat ‘often the best services may be thosedelivered locally with local commitment but‘empowered’ by someone else through a process ofengagement and leadership’.

� Round 8: Promoting Sustainable Communities through the Planning Process,

which included the conclusion that ‘for planningto play its part in delivering sustainablecommunities people need to see and experienceplanning as a system which works for them. Asystem they value as something which can helpthem deliver their vision for their communities –retaining what is valued and changing what isnot.’

� Round 9: Transforming Services throughCitizen Engagement and Empowerment,which concluded that ‘there is a growingrecognition that, by working with users,organisations can create services that are moreeffective and have higher levels of customersatisfaction. This is an evolving area, with scopefor innovation and the opportunity to developground-breaking approaches to service deliveryand engagement.’

A key factor in the success of community empowermentis the degree to which communities take the lead,rather than act as passive recipients of the efforts LocalAuthorities to ‘engage’ with local residents. A balancewill need to be found between taking the lead andbeing effectively engaged as partners in developingideas.

Everyone in a position of authority, or trying to makeempowerment work, needs to understand what it reallymeans if cost-effective solutions are to be generated:

� Addressing the issues local people want to talkabout, as well as finding space to discuss thosewhich may seem more important to decision-makers.

� Finding times and places and mechanisms toexchange information and engage in debatewhich work for the people they are seeking toempower. Sending out voluminous technicaldocuments and asking for comments, or holdingmeetings during the working day, for example,may exclude a lot of people from participation.

� Finding ways to demonstrate that the approach isnot box-ticking or marginal, but is genuinelyintended to make a difference. It needs to be clear,for example, that community involvement is takingplace at a stage when decisions have not beenmade; or an invitation to take on the running of aservice is genuinely open to fundamental thinkingabout what is provided and how.

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� At the same time, not having unreasonableexpectations of what local people, especially if theyare not paid, can and should be doing. People havereasonable expectations that they pay their taxesto have public services delivered to them, bypeople who have the professional competence todo so. Letting people shape how this happens,giving them the opportunity to complement it byvolunteering, or letting them deliver it through amechanism like a social enterprise in which peopleare paid fairly for what they do, is appropriate.‘We’re pulling out, over to you’ is not.

� Providing feedback through the process whichbuilds confidence in its genuineness. ‘You said, wedid’, for example, is an effective technique forbuilding assurance that time spent in a meetingafter work is worthwhile compared with stayinghome with the television.

� Being careful that engagement is benefiting frominput that has reached all sections of thecommunity – for instance through demonstratingthat the proposals or offers from a communityresult from a high-quality, community-led plan.Among those groups who may get left out if thereis not a conscious strategy for involving them are:children and young people, minority communities,and people who are housebound or do not haveaccess to a car.

Recommendation 38We welcome the new Government’s commitment to localism. The plannedDecentralisation and Localism Bill provides anexcellent opportunity to remove some of thebarriers to effective, accountable leadership inrural areas, including taking measures toencourage Local Authorities to devolve tocommunities part of any benefits gained through accepting more development in theirarea to support community facilities andcommunity-led services.

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Sustainability cannot be achieved by how wecurrently live our lives. Change can sometimes benecessary to maintain vibrant communities anddeliver more sustainable lifestyles.

A more sustainable future for all rural communities isboth essential and achievable. It demands afundamental change of approach at both nationaland local level. The Rural Coalition is committed tomaking it happen.

Our commitment

All members of the Rural Coalition will work to

build on this report by continuing to work

together with other relevant bodies to influence

the thinking and behaviour of national and local

politicians and planning professionals – for

example through publications showing good

ways of using new freedoms at local level to

meet the high-level tests set in national policy,

and best practice material highlighting

successful approaches.

Act now

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The Rural Challenge

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The Rural Challenge

51

The Rural Coalition has been supported and advised by the following organisations:

Action for Market TownsAction for Market Towns is an independent, national, membership organisation dedicated to maintainingvibrant and viable small towns. AMT is a not-for-profit company and a registered charity which offerstraining, consultancy, a range of member services and national advocacy for the policies needed to helpour towns. Contact: Action for Market Towns, 5 Baxter Court, Higher Baxter Street, Bury St Edmunds,

Suffolk IP33 1ESt: 01284 756567 f: 01284 761816 e: info@towns.org.uk w: http://towns.org.uk/

Rural Services Network (RSN)The RSN is a group of over 200 service providers and local authorities working to establish best practiceacross the spectrum of rural service provision and to represent the collective concerns of rural serviceproviders and the communities they serve, to Government and its agencies. The RSN exists to ensureservices delivered to the communities of predominantly rural England are as strong and as effective aspossible.Contact: Graham Biggs, Chief Executive, Rural Services Network and SPARSE-Rural

t: 01588674922 (mobile 07966 790197) w: www.rsnonline.org.uk/

Carnegie UK Trust Rural Community Development ProgrammeThe Carnegie UK Trust Rural Community Development Programme examines and promotes ways in whichrural communities across the UK and Ireland can be empowered to shape and influence change and workto ensure that rural priorities are fully recognised by decision-makers.Contact: Carnegie UK Trust, Head office, Comely Park House, 80 New Row, Dunfermline KY 12 7 EJ

t: 01383 721445 e: kirsty@carnegieuk.org w: www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk

Plunkett FoundationThe Plunkett Foundation is a national organisation based in Woodstock, Oxfordshire that helps ruralcommunities to take control of the issues important to them through social enterprise, co-operatives andcommunity-ownership.Contact: www.plunkett.co.uk

Further helpful advice has been provided by:

Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE)The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) is the Government’s advisor onarchitecture, urban design and public space in England. CABE offers expert advice and practical supportto people making decisions about the design of buildings and places.Contact: CABE, 1 Kemble Street, London WC2B 4AN

t: 020 7070 6700 f: 020 7070 6777 e: info@cabe.org.uk w: www.cabe.org.uk/

English Heritage (EH)EH is the Government’s statutory adviser on the historic environment. It exists to protect and promoteEngland’s spectacular historic environment and ensure that its past is researched and understood.Contact: Stephen Trow, Head of National Rural and Environmental Advice, English Heritage,

1 Waterhouse Square, 138-142 Holborn, London EC1N 2STt: 020 7973 3018 f: 020 7973 3001 e: steve.trow@english-heritage.org.uk. w: www.english-heritage.org.uk/

Facilitators, advisers andsupporters

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National Association of Local Councils (NALC)NALC is the nationally recognised membership body representing the interests of around 9,000 localcouncils and their 80,000 local councillors in England. Local councils serve electorates ranging from smallrural communities to major cities; all are independently elected and raise a precept from thelocal community. Together, they can be identified as among the nation’s most influential grouping ofgrassroots opinion-formers.Contact: Justin Griggs, Head of Policy and Development, NALC, 109 Great Russell Street,London WC1B 3LDt: 020 7637 1865 e: justin.griggs@nalc.gov.uk w: www.nalc.gov.uk/

National Housing Federation (NHF)The NHF represents 1,200 independent, not-for-profit housing associations in England and is the voice ofaffordable housing. Its mission is to support and promote the work that housing associations do andcampaign for better housing and neighbourhoods.Contact: National Housing Federation Head Office, Lion Court, 25 Procter Street, London WC1V 6NY

t: 020 7067 1010 f: 020 7067 1011 e: info@housing.org.uk w: www.housing.org.uk/

The English National Park Authorities Association (ENPAA)ENPAA exists to promote and further the needs of the ten English National Park Authorities (NPAs) byproviding a collective voice for their views, supporting the development and capacity of the NPAs to effectchange and working in partnership with other bodies where this adds value.Contact: English National Park Authorities Association, 1st Floor, 2-4 Great Eastern Street,

London EC2A 3NWt: 020 7655 4812 f: 020 7092 9970 e: enquiries:enpaa.org.uk w:www.enpaa.org.uk

The Commission for Rural Communities (CRC) brought the Rural Coalition together in September 2008and has supported the Rural Coalition Chair and its Members with the production of this report and withtechnical advice on its content.The CRC is a Non-Departmental Public Body whose statutory purpose is to promote awareness of thesocial and economic needs of people who live and work in rural areas and help decision-makers acrossand beyond government identify how those needs can best be addressed.Contact: Commission for Rural Communities, John Dower House, Crescent Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire GL50 3RAt: 01242 521381 f: 01242 584270 e: info@ruralcommunities.gov.uk w: www.ruralcommunities.gov.uk/

The Rural Challenge

The Rural Coalition comprises the following organisations:

Action with Communities in Rural England (ACRE)ACRE is the national body of the Rural Community Action Network (RCAN), whoselocal member organisations provide comprehensive support for rural communitiesthroughout England to take action for themselves to achieve a vibrant and sustainable future.Contact: ACRE, Somerford Court, Somerford Road, Cirencester,

Gloucestershire GL7 1TWt: 01285 653477 e: acre@acre.org.uk w: www.acre.org.uk

Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE)CPRE is a charity with a network of over 200 district groups and a branch in everycounty that campaigns for a sustainable future for the English countryside. Throughtheir work they aim to ensure a beautiful, tranquil and diverse countryside thateveryone can value and enjoy.Contact: CPRE, 128 Southwark Street, London SE1 0SW

t: 020 7981 2800 e: info@cpre.org.uk w: www.cpre.org.uk

Country Land and Business Association (CLA)The CLA is the membership organisation for owners of land, property and businesses in rural England and Wales. It offers its members leadership andprofessional advice. It speaks for everyone who believes in a living and workingcountryside.Contact: CLA, 16 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8PQ

t: 020 7235 0511 f: +44 (0)20 7235 4696 e: mail@cla.org.uk w: www.cla.org.uk/

The Local Government Group (LG Group)The LG Group works on behalf of councils to support, promote and improve localgovernment. Members of the LG Group (which includes the Local GovernmentAssociation, LG Improvement and Development, LG Employers, LG Regulation, LG Local Leadership and Local Partnerships) are part of a strong collective voice thatargues the case for local government at every opportunity.Contact: LG Group, Local Government House, Smith Square, London SW1P 3HZ

t: 020 7664 3000 e:info@local.gov.uk w: www.local.gov.uk/

Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI)The RTPI is a charity whose object, as stated in its Royal Charter, is to advance thescience and art of town planning for the benefit of the public. The RTPI champions the role of spatial planning, which gives people a real say in shaping the places where they live and work, and ensures that sustainability is at the heart of all planning activity.Contact: RTPI, 41 Botolph Lane, London EC3R 8DL

t: 020 7929 9494 f: 020 7929 9490 w: www.rtpi.org.uk

Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA)The TCPA is an independent charity working to improve the art and science ofplanning. The TCPA puts social justice and the environment at the heart of policydebate and inspires government, industry and campaigners to take a fresh perspective on major issues, including planning policy, housing, regeneration andclimate change.Contact: TCPA, 17 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AS

t: 020 7930 8903 f: 020 7930 3280 e: tcpa@tcpa.org.uk w: www.tcpa.org.uk

The Rural Coalition